getAttribute() in XSL actions

Whew,

I created my first XSL stylesheet on the weekend using msxsl (thank you
Microsoft!).  I was struck by how many <eval>getAttribute(...)</eval>
calls there were.  Now, my impression was that escaping to ECMAScript
was supposed to be somewhat "exceptional" (i.e. the exception rather
than the rule).

Does anyone else think that maybe there should be a declarative XSL
action element to do this?  What about <select-attribute
name="attributeName"/>? This element would insert the text value from
within the target element's attribute (attributeName).  If one has
multiple target elements, then it could also use <select-attribute>
instead of <select-element> to retrieve the attribute value from the
target-element. Where you would use <select-element from="children |
descendants"><target-element ... /></select-element>, you could use
<select-attribute name="attributeName" from="children |
descendants"><target-element ... /></select-attribute> to retrieve the
attribute's value.

The only thing that leaves me confused is what <select-attribute
name="attributeName" from="children | descendants"/> would do since
we've got no way of disallowing this in the DTD.  Oh well, perhaps
someone brighter than me could come up with a reasonable action. :)

Just a suggestion based on a small amount of XSL experience,

Rob
=======================================================
Rob McDougall            Phone:  (613)751-4800 ext.5232
JetForm Corporation      Fax:    (613)751-4864
http://www.jetform.com   mailto:rmcdouga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
=======================================================


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list