When you need to apply regex matching to text that crosses node boundaries,
in the past two approaches have been proposed:

(a) create a string in which the node boundaries are represented by some
recognizable textual markup (you could use saxon:serialize()), then apply
the regex processing, then reinstate the node structure (e.g. by using
saxon:parse()).

(b) do a deep copy, while processing each of the text nodes to replace the
significant features (such as end of sentence) by nodes (e.g. an
<end-of-sentence/> element). Then apply positional grouping techniques to
transform this into your target structure.

Neither is particularly easy, I'm afraid.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christian Wittern [mailto:cwittern@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 02 October 2007 09:05
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  segmenting a paragraph
> 
> Dear XSL-list readers,
> 
> In trying to solve the following problem I am seeking your help:
> I want to segment paragraphs in a text, so that sentences are 
> enclosed in a <s> element and within the sentences, words 
> between interpunction are within <seg> elements.
> 
> So far, I have been capturing the content of <p> in a string 
> and then using two nested <xsl:analyze-string> blocks with 
> regexes, which work nicely and do what I want.  Now I 
> discovered that there are <note> elements with additional 
> markup in some paragraphs, which get lost in this process. 
> However, I really want to leave these notes alone, as they are.  So:
> 
> <p>Some text.  Some more text, with a comma. <note>This 
> stuff, how boring</note></p>
> 
> should look like:
> 
> <p><s><seg>Some text.</seg></s><s><seg>Some more 
> text,</seg><seg> with a comma.</seg></s><note>This stuff, how 
> boring</note></p>
> 
> I wonder how I tell the processor to leave the note stuff alone?
> 
> Any help appreciated,
> 
> Christian
> 
> --
>   Christian Wittern
>   Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
>   47 Higashiogura-cho, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8265, JAPAN