pre-processing of child elements

Hi,

I've got this problem and question: I need to display the text() of an element
in italics but the child elements in non-italics. Is it possible to pre-process
child-elements within a template of their parent? Is it possible to turn around
the processing and not ask "If the element is child of a certain element, then
behave soandso" but ask "wrap all your children into soandso code"?

In pseudo-code:

<xsl:template match="element">
  <i>
    <xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
    <non-i><xsl:apply-templates select="child-elements"/></non-i>
  </i>
</xsl:template>

So far I always seem to have to go the following way, but with a lot of other
things to check inside the templates for the processing of the child-elements,
this can quickly become very nasty coding!


<xsl:template match="element">
  <i><xsl:apply-templates/></i>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="child-element">
  <xsl:if test="parent::element">
    <xsl:text>&lt;/i&gt;</xsl:text>
  </xsl:if>
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
  <xsl:if test="parent::element">
    <xsl:text>&lt;i&gt;</xsl:text>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

Do I hit the point or is there any other way around the problem?
Thank you very much in advance, any advice will help,
Torsten Schassan


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Torsten Schassan (Projekt Handschriftendatenbank/MASTER)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Postfach 1364, D-38299 Wolfenbuettel
Tel.: +49-5331-808-117, schassan at hab dot de