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Re: [xsl] XSL-FO list with sublist


Subject: Re: [xsl] XSL-FO list with sublist
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:01:35 -0500

Lucas,

While as I said, you can, technically, do this with xsl:for-each, doing so here is making your code excessively complex and difficult to debug. When I broke it out into templates it became immediately clear how list-items are being generated in the wrong places (among other problems).

Basically you need a logic like what I described:

At the top, generate a list
  each goal becomes a list item
    it contains a header test (in a block)
    if it contains questions, it gets a list (a list-block)
      each question becomes a list item
      it contains a header text (in a block)
      if it contains metrics, it gets a list (a list-block)
        each metric becomes a list item
        it contains its text

If you scrutinize this, you'll see it describes your sublist structure exactly, while mapping the source elements to the formatting objects needed to create the lists inside lists. Note that while sublist items appear, they never appear except inside list-blocks, where they are legal.

Here's an illustration of this in XSLT using templates.

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
      <fo:layout-master-set>
        ...
      </fo:layout-master-set>

      <fo:page-sequence master-reference="simple">
        <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
          <fo:block> ... </fo:block>

          <xsl:call-template name="listBlock"/>
          <!-- dropping the list into the flow here -->

        </fo:flow>
      </fo:page-sequence>
    </fo:root>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="listBlock">
    <fo:list-block>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="gqmroot/goal"/>
      <!-- each goal gets its own list item -->
    </fo:list-block>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="goal">
    <!-- each goal gets its own list item -->
    <fo:list-item>
      <fo:list-item-label>
        <fo:block/>
      </fo:list-item-label>
      <fo:list-item-body>
        <!-- inside the body, first our header text -->
        <fo:block>
          <xsl:value-of select="@titleGoal"/>
        </fo:block>
        <!-- after the header text, we may need a list for our questions -->
        <xsl:if test="question">
          <fo:list-block>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="question"/>
            <!-- each question gets its own list item -->
          </fo:list-block>
        </xsl:if>
     </fo:list-item-body>
    </fo:list-item>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="question">
    <!-- similarly, each question gets its own list item -->
    <fo:list-item>
      <fo:list-item-label>
        <fo:block/>
      </fo:list-item-label>
      <fo:list-item-body>
        <!-- inside the body, first our header text -->
        <fo:block>
          <xsl:value-of select="@titleQuestion"/>
        </fo:block>
        <!-- after the header text, we may need a list for our metrics -->
        <xsl:if test="metric">
          <fo:list-block>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="metric"/>
            <!-- each metric gets its own list item -->
          </fo:list-block>
        </xsl:if>
      </fo:list-item-body>
    </fo:list-item>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="metric">
    <!-- similarly, each metric gets its own list-item -->
    <fo:list-item>
      <fo:list-item-label>
        <fo:block/>
      </fo:list-item-label>
      <fo:list-item-body>
        <fo:block>
          <xsl:value-of select="@titleMetric"/>
          <xsl:value-of select="unparsed-text(@ChartLink)"
            disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
        </fo:block>
      </fo:list-item-body>
    </fo:list-item>
  </xsl:template>

(Note: untested!)

One these are in templates we see how much code duplication there is, since the same structure appears over and over at different levels. It could in fact be collapsed into something much smaller and neater.

But I think you should look at this and get it working before you move onto that, as a more advanced exercise. :->

I hope this helps,
Wendell



======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================


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