Re: XSL outputting HTML from an XML source

Ariel Garza wrote:
> 
> This is close to what I need but the problem I have where this template
> is called.  In order for this to process a <B> tag, it would need to be
> called in the same node as the <B> tag exists.  I tried to do this:
> 
> <xsl:template match="//B">
>   <B><xsl:value-of select="B"/></B>
> </xsl:template>

When you are inside this template, you are inside the <B> element.
So <... select="B"> will be referring to children of the current <B>
element that are also <B> elements. What you want is <... select=".">.
But, even better, why not apply templates, which will by default copy
text through, but handle italics inside the <B>. You can handle all of
your formatting tags like this :

<xsl:template match="B|I"> <!-- etc -->
  <xsl:copy>  <!-- copies the start tag, without attributes -->
    <xsl:apply-templates /> <!-- processes children -->
  </xsl:copy> <!-- close tag -->
</xsl:template>


> but this doesn't get applied with every template.  The root of my
> problem is that I will not necessarily know where any of these tags will
> happen.  If the person entering content into the XML wants to have an
> underline or italics inline with other content, they would probably put
> <i>blah blah blah</i> in the middle of the XML tag.
> 
> <description>
>   There is a a <i>huge</i> storm coming...
> </description>

I think you just need to use <xsl:apply-templates /> everywhere instead
of <xsl:value-of>. This will ensure that the entire input tree is
processed properly by your templates. If you don't want to deal with
some part of the tree, define an empty template:

<xsl:template match="unwanted_data" />


> Is there a way to have a tag interpreted without prior knowledge as to
> its location in the tree?  An example would be a forced <BR> in a piece
> of content.  I need a block of text + HTML to exist in a single node of
> XML.  If a content manager needs to put in a <B>, or <I> or wants to
> have 2 paragraphs in one block, how would the XSL sheet know that you
> have another paragraph or one of these style tags?  Thanks for the help,
> it is very much appreciated.

You should probably ask your content manager to use <p> tags. In the
absence of that you could translate all carriage returns to <br> tags,
using Steve Muench's br_replace template (if you can't find it in the
archives, I can send you a copy off-list) - but this is probably not
the right solution if they're entering the text in a text editor.

Hope this helps.

-- 
Warren Hedley


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