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At 2003-07-25 10:42 -0700, Dare Obasanjo wrote:
>One of our devs just made me question all that's right in the world with
>the question below. Given the following XML
>
><pre>
> <b>bold</b>
> <i>italic</i>
></pre>
>
>what is the result of the following XPath expression
>"count(/pre/child::node())" ?
>
>Is the answer 2 or 5?
XPath says it is 5 because of the text nodes. See[1] the Saxon report below.
A DTD might say the intervening white-space is ignorable, but XPath doesn't
preserve the concept of ignorable white-space. All white-space in XPath is
significant, hence burdening a stylesheet writer with indicating which
elements have ignorable white-space using <xsl:strip-space>.
A big problem teaching XSLT to users of Microsoft products is that IE
engages MSXML throwing away *all* whitespace, which doesn't conform to
XPath 1.0. See[2] the IE6 report below.
I hope this helps.
.................... Ken
[1] Using Saxon:
T:\ftemp>type dare.xml
<pre>
<b>bold</b>
<i>italic</i>
</pre>
T:\ftemp>showtree dare.xml
T:\ftemp>type dare.xml.shw
SHOWTREE Stylesheet - http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/
Processor: SAXON 6.5.2 from Michael Kay
1 Element 'pre':
1.I Namespace 'xml': {http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace}
1.1 Text (pre): {
}
1.2 Element 'b' (pre):
1.2.I Namespace 'xml': {http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace}
1.2.1 Text (pre,b): {bold}
1.3 Text (pre): {
}
1.4 Element 'i' (pre):
1.4.I Namespace 'xml': {http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace}
1.4.1 Text (pre,i): {italic}
1.5 Text (pre): {
}
T:\ftemp>
[2] Using MSXML through IE6 and copying the screen contents to the clipboard:
T:\ftemp>type dare-ms.xml
<?xml-stylesheet href="showtree.msxsl" type="text/xsl"?>
<pre>
<b>bold</b>
<i>italic</i>
</pre>
T:\ftemp>copy con nul
SHOWTREE Stylesheet
file:///T:/ftemp/dare-ms.xml
http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/
Root:
1 Proc. Inst. 'xml-stylesheet' (): {href="showtree.msxsl" type="text/xsl"}
2 Element 'pre' ():
2.1 Element 'b' (pre):
2.1.1 Text (pre,b): {bold}
2.2 Element 'i' (pre):
2.2.1 Text (pre,i): {italic}
^Z
1 file(s) copied.
T:\ftemp>
--
Upcoming hands-on courses: in-house corporate training available;
North America public: XSL-FO Aug 4,2003; XSLT/XPath Aug 12, 2003
G. Ken Holman mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
Crane Softwrights Ltd. http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/x/
Box 266, Kars, Ontario CANADA K0A-2E0 +1(613)489-0999 (F:-0995)
ISBN 0-13-065196-6 Definitive XSLT and XPath
ISBN 0-13-140374-5 Definitive XSL-FO
ISBN 1-894049-08-X Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath
ISBN 1-894049-11-X Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO
Member of the XML Guild of Practitioners: http://XMLGuild.info
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