ugly transformation

Here's an ugly problem.  Michael Kay helped me with a similar problem a few years ago, but this one is a bit more 
complicated.  I have a list of flights which needs to be displayed.  Each city gets a line on a screen.  I must display as many cities as possible, selecting initially in order of scheduled time, and then sort alphabetically by city.  If the flight has a remark, then that takes an extra line following each city.  If a remark exists, it must stay on the same page as the city.

Sample XML:


<root>
    <row schedule="2004-02-19T07:00:00" flight="DL 1234">
        <city order="1">Los Angeles</city>
        <city order="2">San Francisco</city>
        <city order="3">Seattle</city>
    </row>
    <row schedule="2004-02-19T07:15:00" flight="DL 3333">
        <city order="1">Lincoln</city>
        <city order="2">Phoenix</city>
        <remark>Flight delayed due to weather conditions</remark>
    </row>
    <row schedule="2004-02-19T07:30:00" flight="DL 8888">
        <city order="1">Chicago</city>
        <city order="2">Newark</city>
        <city order="3">London</city>
        <city order="4">Frankfurt</city>
        <city order="5">Istanbul</city>
    </row>
    <row schedule="2004-02-19T07:45:00" flight="DL 7777">
        <city order="1">Denver</city>
        <city order="2">Kansas City</city>
        <remark>Flight delayed due to maintenance</remark>
    </row>
</root>


So let's say, for example, that we can have 5 lines of data per page and we have a limit of 3 pages.  In a typical 
environment, I might have 20 lines per page and up to 12 pages and hundreds of flights.  Also, the remarks could take up more than one line.


Page 1:

Chicago     DL 8888     07:30
Frankfurt   DL 8888     07:30
Istanbul    DL 8888     07:30
London      DL 8888     07:30


[Lincoln flight moved to page 2 because remark needs to stay on page with flight]
Page 2:

Lincoln     DL 3333     07:15
    Flight delayed due to weather conditions
Los Angeles DL 1234     07:00
Newark      DL 8888     07:30


[Phoenix flight moved to page 3 because remark needs to stay on page with flight]
Page 3:

Phoenix     DL 3333     07:15
    Flight delayed due to weather conditions
San Francisco   DL 1234     07:00
Seattle     DL 1234     07:00



The 7:45 flight does not get displayed because we don't have enough room on our pages.

When I iterate through the data, I can determine how many flights will fit on an individual page.  The problem is that when I am doing my initial time-based selection, I can predict how many lines a flight will take, but I cannot predict whether the flight is going to fit on a page, forcing me to use an extra line (chicken or egg scenario).  This means that I would have to take an educated guess at the number of flights which will fit (initially assume that I'll use all lines of all pages) and then calculate my pages to determine if they'll fit.  If they don't fit, I would then remove the last flight from the list and try again.  This is very inefficient, since I'd need to create a new node set for each iteration.

Any ideas how to handle this problem cleanly an efficiently in an XSLT stylesheet?


thanks,
Keith





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