[bitc-dev] XSLT question

[Dominique Quatravaux]

Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:

>Dominique:
>
>I seem to recall a note from you saying that you had built a transformer
>that generated LaTeX from some form of XML input. If I am confused,
>please forgive me.
>  
>
You are correct (you always are :), but the peculiarity of my stuff is 
that the transformation language is Perl, not XSLT. So whitespace 
handling is a no-brainer for me.

Oh, at this point I might just as well pull a fast one on the list:

http://www.idealx.org/DocBkXML2LaTeX/

>1. I know that there is some mechanism to canonicalize whitespace in
>XSLT, which eliminates embedded newlines and collapses multiple spaces
>into a single space. Do you know how this is done?
>  
>
I don't know, but a concurrent project of mine does:

http://db2latex.sourceforge.net/

In the tarball there is a file named normalize-scape.mod.xsl, that 
appears to normalize space (sic). I don't know the specifics, but I 
threw the following test case at it,

word<footnote>

          <para>foo

bar</para>
          <para>

baz

</para>
        </footnote>

And the result is correct and good-looking, like:

word²

---
² foo bar
  baz

>2. How did you emit intentional newlines when you handled paragraphs?
>
This too is correctly done by db2latex.sourceforge.net - a quick glance 
at para.mod.xsl yields

                <xsl:text>&#10;</xsl:text>

which looks very much like a literal newline to me.

>3. Once the above problem is "solved", I will then need to discover how
>to restore literal (raw) input processing in verbatim environments.
>  
>
Again db2latex.sourceforge.net does this, and there is a file 
conspicuously named verbatim.mod.xsl inside the package (that I can't 
fathom :).

Regards,

-- 
<< Tout n'y est pas parfait, mais on y honore certainement les jardiniers >>

			Dominique Quatravaux <dom at kilimandjaro.dyndns.org>