Re: design ideas? exploiting variables

The problem with this approach is that you need to write code in
another language to control the pipeline flow.

I'd like the solution to be entirely self-contained.  I want an emacs
user with a flat file database to be able to import a stylesheet, run
it with Saxon, and have it "just work."

I've already managed to avoid any external code for the database
interaction by using http with the doc() function.  I just now need to
work out this bit.

The formatted output that results from all the variables is pretty
simple, with bib entries like so:

               <p id="Thrift1990a"><span class="mark">1</span>. <span
class="creator">N. Thrift</span> (<span class="year">1990</span>) <span
class="title  ">For a New Regional Geography 1</span>, <span
class="container"><span class="title italic ">Progress in Human
Geography</span>, <span class="origin"></span><span
class="part-details"> 14(2)<span class="pages"> pp.
27279</span></span></span>.
               </p>

In other words, the above is what is held in the formatted-biblist
variable.

Still, I'm not quite sure how I'd do that.  Any variable, with a choose
statement with different parameter options?  Then use xsl:apply-imports
with that parameter option?  [note: I've not used apply-imports before,
so am not sure if that's right]

I've also not quite figured out the citation part, though (it's more
difficult to imagine using global variables for them).

I'm proposing, BTW, to use the same citation schema for both OpenOffice
(where it's already approved) and Word, where the structure for the
citation is:

<cite:citation>
  <cite:citation-source>
    [pointers to the reference data; will be the same regardless of
where it's embedded]
  </cite:citation-source>
  <cite:citation-body>
    [formatted references; will vary depending on where it's embedded]
  </cite:citation-body>
</cite:citation>

The differences between the content of the variable (above) would then
be trivially different than what would get inserted into the
cite:citation-body element.