Thanks for the ideas...they may have given me a solution. I'm still
not familiar enough with XSLT to really think with it or in it, but
such ideas can give me a spark. I'll be more specific about the
problem and lay out my quick idea for a solution. Then everyone can
ridicule my hole-ridden solution and give me better ideas. =)
So we have a collection of snippets with the same key attribute. These
snippets can have many types:
sitemap-param
component-param
name
description
details
warnings
see-also
etc.
In addition to the type attribute, I have given them an optional name
attribute. This means that a snippet of type="name" and another of
type="description" can be linked together under the name="XHTML
Generator" or some other such categorical designation. This linking is
for the publishing aspect of things where we need to create a document
that has meaningful structure and layout that can be displayed on the
fly off of a search.
So for publishing I had the idea to follow something of a Javadoc
layout and give the document structure with a name at the top followed
by a description, details, warnings, and see-also. However, elements
of all types with a name attribute that isn't the null string should
all be grouped together. Ex:
<snippet type="name">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="description">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="see-also">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="name" name="XComponent">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="description" name="XComponent">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="sitemap-example" name="XComponent">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="name" name="YComponent">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="description" name="YComponent">
...
</snippet>
<snippet type="sitemap-example" name="YComponent">
...
</snippet>
Hope that clarifies the problem.
Thanks,
Robert
