This is nothing to do with keys.

You're heading towards a meta-stylesheet: a transformation written in XSLT
that converts your abstract (or generic) stylesheet into a concrete
stylesheet. This is a perfectly feasible thing to do but you need to think
very carefully about what you are trying to achieve.

Michael Kay 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce D'Arcus [mailto:bdarcus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 20 August 2004 23:11
> To: XSL-List@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  keys and variables
> 
> I'm trying to understand when and how to use keys.
> 
> What I want is to a) remove all explicit xpath expressions from the 
> core of my stylesheets so as to allow one to use them with different 
> schemas (let's say TEI for bibliographic representation, vs. 
> MODS), and 
> b) make it as fast as possible.
> 
> So let's take a minimal document:
> 
> <bibs>
>    <book ID="1">
>      <title-main>First Title</title-main>
>      <author>John Doe</author>
>    </book>
>    <book ID="2">
>      <title-main>Second Title</title-main>
>      <author>Jane Smith</author>
>    </book>
> </bibs>
> 
> Basically, I want the main xslt files to have expressions that are 
> generic: like maybe $title and $creator in this case.  
> Ultimately there 
> may be twenty or so structures so defined.  To use data 
> defined against 
> a different schema, one would just change these variables or keys.
> 
> Any suggestions on how best to tackle this?
> 
> Bruce