XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference, 4th Edition (171 page)

The grouping condition ensures that adjacent

elements go in a group together, while each

element goes in a group by itself (calling
position()
ensures each

element gets a unique grouping key—you could also have used
generate-id()
). We are only interested in the rule that processes the first bullet:

This template rule processes the group of adjacent bullets by outputting the necessary

element to the result tree, and inside this it creates the elements that represent each individual bullet, by calling another template rule (in a different mode) to process each one. The full stylesheet is in
bullets.xsl
, a sample source file in
bullets.xml
.


Now look at a more complex example, involving the formatting of a Shakespeare play. You can download the text of all Shakespeare's plays, marked up in XML by Jon Bosak, at
http://metalab.unc.edu/bosak/xml/eg/shaks200.zip
.


Example: Grouping Consecutive Elements by Name


This example shows how to tackle a problem in which the content of an element (in this case, a

) consists of a number of

elements followed by a number of

elements.


Source


You can run this example on any of the Shakespeare plays. For convenience, the download directory contains the file
ado-scene1.xml
, containing the first scene from
Much Ado About Nothing
.


In this markup, a

element consists of a sequence of

elements interleaved with stage directions. A

contains one or more

elements indicating who is speaking, and one or more

elements indicating what they are saying. So in
Hamlet
you have speeches like this:





HAMLET


My fate cries out,


And makes each petty artery in this body


As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.


Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.


By heaven, I‘ll make a ghost of him that lets me!


I say, away! Go on; I‘ll follow thee.





and also speeches with multiple speakers:





ROSENCRANTZ


GUILDENSTERN


We'll wait upon you.





There are very few occasions where Shakespeare allows two characters to speak together for more than a single line (the witches’ speech in
Macbeth
is tagged as
ALL
), but here is an example from
Timon of Athens
:





PHRYNIA


TIMANDRA


Well, more gold: what then?


Believe‘t, that we’ll do any thing for gold.





Output


Suppose that you want to output each speech as a row in a table, with the speakers listed in one column and the text in the other. It should look like this (you wouldn't normally make the table cells visible in this way, but it helps to be able to see the structure):


PHRYNIA TIMANDRA	More counsel with more money, bounteous Timon.
TIMON	More whore, more mischief first; I have given you earnest.
ALCIBIADES	Strike up the drum towards Athens! Farewell, Timon: If I thrive well, I'll visit thee again.
TIMON	If I hope well, I'll never see thee more.

Stylesheet


So what does the stylesheet look like?


The content of a

element consists of two groups: a group containing consecutive

elements and a group containing consecutive

elements. So you could try to write it like this:





  


  


    


       


          


           



       


    


  


  





Here we are using the name of an element as its grouping key.


But I omitted one complication. Within the sequence of

elements, there can also be a

representing a stage direction, thus:





TIMON


Long live so, and so die.


Exit APEMANTUS


I am quit.


More things like men! Eat, Timon, and abhor them.





When this happens you would want to output it, in its proper place, in italics:


TIMON	Long live so, and so die.
Exit APEMANTUS
I am quit.
More things like men! Eat, Timon, and abhor them.

What does this do to the stylesheet?


The second group, the one that comprises the right-hand column of the table, no longer shares a common element name. What you can do, however, is allocate

elements to one group, and anything else to a different group.





  


  

                       group-adjacent=“if (self::SPEAKER) then 0 else 1”>


    


       


          


          



       


    


  


  





The fact that you output the content of the

and

elements using

means that you don't have to change the body of this rule to handle

elements as well; all you need to do is add a template rule with
match=“SPEECH/STAGEDIR”
to handle them.


To complete the stylesheet, you need to add template rules for the individual elements such as

. These are straightforward, so I will not list them here. You can find the complete stylesheet in
speech.xsl
.