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Re: xsl:counter and xsl:counter-increment with XSLT

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At 99/11/05 08:07 -0700, George Martell wrote:

The problem is that, upon changing from XSL to XSLT, my xsl stylesheets no longer support the use of "counter" and "counter-increment." How can I regain the counter feature?

I had to rewrite my stylesheets rethinking the approach to utilize position() and <xsl:number> ... this wasn't initially easy because not all templates were being invoked with the appropriate node set to produce the correct values for position(), but the fact that <xsl:number> is based on the source node tree meant it was sometimes easier to use that (though my select="expression" attribute sometimes was a bit complex qualifying the nodes being counted).

But, though I found no rule of thumb, in the end it turned out it wasn't difficult, just a matter of thinking of the problem differently. Being classically trained in programming, counters were easy to use. Trying to think in the new approach without being caught in classical concepts was difficult, but the actual use of position() and <xsl:number> turns out to be straightforward if you keep your mindset away from the "old" way of doing things.

While I haven't given you a "replacement" for counter, I hope the above gives some direction on how to look at a different approach. Just think of those constructs you have relative to the set of nodes being processed and the nodes' locations in the source node tree.

............ Ken

p.s. one thing I did while doing the conversion was to just comment out the use of the counter constructs until I had debugged the use of position() and <xsl:number> ... that way if I did have a problem, I didn't have to rethink what the old counter solution was, I just looked in the comments at my use of the old constructs ... once I was up and running and fully debugged, I removed the comments.

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G. Ken Holman                    mailto:gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Crane Softwrights Ltd.             http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/m/
Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0   +1(613)489-0999   (Fax:-0995)
Web site: XSL/XML/DSSSL/SGML services, training, libraries, products.
Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath      ISBN 1-894049-02-0
Next instructor-led training:  1999-11-08, 1999-11-09, 1999-12-05/06,
-                1999-12-07, 2000-02-27/28, 2000-05-11/12, 2000-05-15

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