RE: More XSL Discussion

/ Sean Mc Grath <digitome@xxxxxx> was heard to say:
[...]
| Real World Example:
[...]
| Part : Introduction
|  Chapter : The Foo Manual 
|   Section : Introduction
|    1. The Foo Manual is a work of epic proportions...in the future.
| 

/ Norman Walsh [mailto:norm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] said on Thursday, February 26,
1998 4:40 AM
| The only wrinkle at the moment is grabbing the first and last
| ten words out of the paragraphs.  XSL needs to be able to do
| this, but I don't think we've figured out how yet.

Sure we have.  This is a classic case where escape to script makes sense.
This particular formatting operation is not in the 90%-common case (or even
99% case), and so should not result in complicating the declarative parts of
XSL.  A graceful escape to script for purposes like this should support this
kind of customized (in this case string-level) formatting.

Something like this:
<define-script>
  function myTextTrimmingFunction(string) {
    // arbitrary string manipulation goes here
    return result;
  }
</define-script>

<rule>
  <target-element type="p">

  <paragraph>
    <eval>myTextTrimmingFunction(this.text)</eval>
  </paragraph>
</rule>


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