XSL formatting sorting issues
Aidan Wilson
aidan.wilson at unimelb.edu.au
Tue Mar 1 02:56:36 UTC 2011
John, your variable xsl element worked. I had to fiddle with what you gave me
quite a bit, but oxygen just paid for itself giving me all the red squiggly
lines showing me where every xsl/xml error was. Here's what I came up with and
below is a sample from the output.
> <xsl:for-each select="Words[Status!='Exclude']/Meanings/Reverse">
> <xsl:sort select="."/>
> <xsl:sort select="../../Headword"/>
> <xsl:variable name="this_word" select="."></xsl:variable>
> <xsl:choose>
> <xsl:when test="$this_word = ancestor::Words/preceding-sibling::Words[Status!='Exclude']/Meanings/Reverse"></xsl:when>
> <xsl:otherwise><br/><strong><xsl:value-of select="."/></strong><br/></xsl:otherwise>
> </xsl:choose>
> <xsl:value-of select="../../Headword"/><br/>
> </xsl:for-each>
Output (sample):
> arm
> lari
>
> armlets
> binbin
> yerrel
>
> armpit
> wanganyjarri
>
> armpit sweat
> langornen
>
> around
> dabali-ma
> wirriny-nya
So again, thanks heaps! (I don't quite understand the intricate details of
ancestor::Words/preceding-sibling blah blah, but that doesn't matter).
-Aidan
--
Aidan Wilson
PhD Candidate
Dept of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
The University of Melbourne
+61428 458 969
aidan.wilson at unimelb.edu.au
On Tue, 1 Mar 2011, Aidan Wilson wrote:
> Thanks for your help, John (et al.). I'll look into that for the
> de-suplication of reverse elements when I get time.
>
> Tom Honeyman had a quicker solution for sorting the entire list of reverse
> elements with respect to each other, and not within sets of 'Words' elements,
> and that was to group the two <xsl:for-each together, so instead of:
> <xsl:for-each select="Words[Status!='Exclude']">
> <xsl:for-each select="Meanings/Reverse">
> I now have just:
> <xsl:for-each select="Words[Status!='Exclude']/Meanings/Reverse">
>
> The way I had it meant I was selecting each word, and within that set, each
> Reverse element, which was where the sort was having trouble. This selection
> now works brilliantly.
>
> -Aidan
>
> On Mon, 28 Feb 2011, John Mansfield wrote:
>
>> Hi Aidan,
>> I will try to help. First I'll discuss your issue about sorting according
>> to
>> Reverse elements, then secondly I'll address your "ideal" solution of not
>> duplicating identical Reverse elements.
>>
>> 1. If you want to have all the Reverse elements in the source sorted as a
>> single list, rather than a series of sorted lists, one for each Headword,
>> then I think your problem is that you are doing your sort inside this
>> for-each loop:
>> <xsl:for-each select="Words[Status!='Exclude']">
>>
>> So you need a template structure that goes directly from the
>> whole-dictionary level right to the Reverse elements, rather than getting
>> to
>> them via the Words wrappers. Does that make sense? Maybe something like:
>>
>> <xsl:template match="Dictionary">
>> <xsl:for-each select="//Reverse">
>> <xsl:sort select="."/>
>> <p><b><xsl:value-of select="."/></b></p>
>> <xsl:value:of select="ancestor::Words/Headword"/>
>> </xsl:for-each>
>> </xsl:template>
>>
>> PS: another way of sorting in xsl is with an attribute @order-by on the
>> <for-each element. I don't know what the difference is between the methods,
>> and it may be arcane.
>>
>>
>> 2. As for de-duplicating the Reverse elements: I don't think XSL is a
>> particularly good tool for it; it's not a very good framework for comparing
>> strings... and when you want to extract wordlists from data, you often get
>> sets of things that are not identical character-by-character, but you would
>> like to have treated as one.
>>
>> That said, it might work if you have a condition, simply asking at each
>> Reverse element, "have I already displayed a Reverse element like this
>> one?"
>> And if not, then display it, but alongside display not just it's own
>> Headword sibling, but the Headwords of each Reverse elements with that
>> value.
>> Code could be something like this:
>>
>> <xsl:template match="Dictionary">
>> <xsl:for-each select="//Reverse">
>> <xsl:sort select="."/>
>> <!-- I'm not sure if you need this variable, but you might need it for
>> the output bit below-->
>> <xsl:variable name="this_word" select="."/>
>> <xsl:choose>
>> <xsl:when test="$this_word =
>> ancestor::Words/preceding-sibling::Words//Reverse">
>> <!-- no output - we've seen this Reverse before -->
>> </xsl:when>
>> <xsl:otherwise>
>> <!-- output the Reverse element -->
>> <p><b><xsl:value-of select="."/></b></p>
>> <!-- for each Words element that has this Reverse word in it,
>> output the Headword -->
>> <xsl:for-each
>> select="ancestor::Words/preceding-sibling::Words[descendent::Reverse =
>> $this_word]
>> or ancestor::Words/following-sibling::Words[descendent::Reverse =
>> $this_word]">
>> <xsl:value:of select="Headword"/>
>> </xsl:for-each>
>> </xsl:otherwise>
>> </xsl:for-each>
>> </xsl:template>
>>
>> I don't know if that will work, but it seems like it should.
>>
>> j
>>
>> On 28 February 2011 15:30, Aidan Wilson <a.wilson at pgrad.unimelb.edu.au>
>> wrote:
>> Hi RNLDers (I still prefer "Ronaldos")
>>
>> Does anyone have fairly good XSL skills and could guide me
>> through a particularly nasty dictionary formatting issue?
>>
>> The problem is that I have a reverse word finder which is built
>> by extracting an element from each headword ('Reverse' which was
>> originally put in for exactly this purpose). Here's an example
>> of a word's XML (totally made up
>> example to demonstrate the point):
>>
>> <Words>
>> <Headword>elevate</Headword>
>> <Category>verb</Category>
>> <Meanings>
>> <Definition>to raise, to lift</Definition>
>> <Reverse>raise</Reverse>
>> <Reverse>lift</Reverse>
>> <Examples>
>> <Example>You need to elevate your blood pressure</Example>
>> <Translation>You need to raise your blood
>> pressure</Translation>
>> </Examples>
>> </Meanings>
>> </Words>
>>
>> The difficulty is that some words will have more than one
>> Reverse element (as above). At the moment I can either:
>> a) Extract only the first reverse element from each entry,
>> display it next to the headword, and all will be in alphabetical
>> order by the Reverse element, or
>> b) Extract all reverse elements from all headwords, and display
>> each one next to its headword, but they will be ordered *within
>> the set of reverse elements of that word.
>>
>> What I mean by that, is that I can get it working so I can
>> produce:
>>
>> Lift:
>> elevate
>>
>> Raise:
>> elevate
>>
>> But the Reverse elements from any other words will be sorted
>> amongst themselves, but independently of any other word. So what
>> I get in my English to Wagiman section is essentially ordered by
>> the Wagiman word, but each word's
>> English glosses sorted among themselves.
>>
>> What I would like is to pair each reverse element with its
>> headword and then sort the whole list for the whole dictionary
>> at once.
>>
>> Ideally, actually, I'd like to group together identical Reverse
>> elements so that I could have something like:
>>
>> Lift:
>> boost
>> elevate
>> heighten
>> raise
>>
>> Instead of listing them separately.
>>
>> Here's the relevant section of my xsl stylesheet:
>>
>> <xsl:for-each select="Words[Status!='Exclude']">
>> <xsl:sort select="Meanings/Reverse"/>
>> <xsl:for-each select="Meanings/Reverse">
>> <p><strong><xsl:value-of
>> select="."/></strong><br/>
>> <xsl:value-of select="../../Headword"/></p>
>> </xsl:for-each>
>> </xsl:for-each>
>>
>> Hopefully this isn't an impossible task. And hopefully someone
>> knows more than my week's worth of xsl and can point me in the
>> right direction!
>>
>> --
>> Aidan Wilson
>>
>> PhD Candidate
>> Dept of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
>> The University of Melbourne
>>
>> +61428 458 969
>> a.wilson at pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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