xml-dev - designing the XSLT

["Raheja, Dhruv (TRANS)" <Dhruv.Raheja@Trans.ge.com>]

> hi,
>      i have prepared the DTD and XML for my application. i am having some
> problems deciding how to structure the XSL  and i'm hoping someone will be
> able to guide me. my  design objective for the XSL doc is that it should
> be a generic doc that i can apply to applications (in my case i'm trying
> to design tech manuals using XML) that have the same make-up or XML/DTD
> heirarchy. i guess to make things easy for the time being i could design
> the XSL in such a way that it suits my prototype document but it would
> obviously be more beneficial if i could design a generic XSL that would
> cater to all the manuals that are are authored using XML. on similar
> lines, i have designed a more-or-less "generic" DTD and XML. the basic
> problem is that my DTD is rather loosely structured just so that it can be
> applied to any similar XML document.  e.g. i have the declaration:
> 
> <!ELEMENT activity (schematic | outline | text_description |
> visual_description | procedure | note | warning | caution)*>
> 
> as you can see, any element can pretty much appear in any order and any
> number of times. e.g.  i could have  <visual_description> before a
> <procedure>  or  say before a  <text_description> and i could have
> multiple ocurrences of <visual_description>. the case is the same with
> <note>, <warning>, <caution> etc. 
> 
> this is causing a problem to me when i try and design/conceptualize a
> generic XSL because although the elements could be the same for all XML
> docs, their order/inclusion could be different for each doc. how do i
> overcome this problem? what functionality of XSL (e.g. commands) would be
> best for designing such an XSL doc? 
> 
> i am really hoping someone will be able to help me with this.
> 
> thanks a lot,
> Dhruv  
> 
>  Dhruv Raheja
> Summer Intern (Documentation Center)
> GE Transportation Systems
> 2901 East Lake Road
> Erie, PA 16531
> Ph : (814) 875 - 2529 (O)
>        (814) 824 - 2888 (R)
> 
>