On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Michael Kay wrote:

> >   <a>
> >    <b attr="w1 w3 w6">...</b>
> >    <b attr="w2 w12 w3 w7">...</b>
> >    ... more <b>s here ...
> >   </a>
> > 
> > when processing an <a> element, i need to calculate the 
> > maximum number of whitespace-separated words for any 
> > "b/@attr" attribute. so just what you see above, the value 
> > would be 4, based on that second <b> child of <a>.
> > 
> > AFAICT, this will involve three steps:
> > 
> > 1) collect the "b/@attr" attributes (easy)
> > 2) normalize space and word count each of those attribute values
> >    (again, easy, stealing from kay, p. 527, the "word-count"
> >    template :-)
> > 3) finding the maximum of those values
> 
> You can count the words without recursive processing:
> 
> $x := normalize-space(@attr)
> $y := translate(@attr, ' ', '')
> $wc := string-length($x) - string-length($y) +1

ok, thanks.  that makes things easier.

> > since, as i understand it, you can't have a node-set of just 
> > numbers, 
> 
> Since numbers aren't nodes, how could you have a node-set containing
> numbers?

but that was my point.  the sample XSL i showed for calculating the 
minimum value was *treating* a node-set as if the individual elements
were numbers, and was comparing them numerically.

  <xsl:value-of select="$nodes[not($nodes &lt; .)]"/>

how would this be interpreted?  the book refers to this as calculating
"the minimum value of a node set", which to my mind is viewing the 
"nodes" as numerical values.  i wasn't trying to suggest that numbers
were actual nodes, only that they were being "treated" that way by
the above expression.

rday


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