Hi,
currently, I'm investigating EPUB(3) and dates in pubdate.
It's not unusual to have the following <pubdate> inside an info, using the
default date format:
<pubdate><?dbtimestamp?></pubdate>
This works for HTML, FO, etc. except for EPUB. For EPUB, you get:
WARNING: wrong metadata date format: '' in element bookinfo/pubdate. It must
be in one of these forms: YYYY, YYYY-MM, or YYYY-MM-DD.
Well, I think the message is correct as there is really no text. It doesn't
help to add a "format" pseudo attribute here:
<pubdate><?dbtimestamp format="Y, m d?></pubdate>
This would lead to the same message.
Digging deeper into the EPUB3 stylesheets, I assume the "dbtimestamp" PI isn't
supported at all. The pubdate is used as OPF metadata in the following
template:
<xsl:template match="date|pubdate" mode="opf.metadata">
<xsl:variable name="date">
<xsl:call-template name="format.meta.date">
<xsl:with-param name="string" select="normalize-space(.)"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>
<!-- ... --->
</xsl:template>
However, "format.meta.data" just checks if the given text is in the right
format. If not, it displays the above warning message.
Now I'm wondering if this is the right approach. 8-) Shouldn't we distinguish
between two cases:
1. date or pubdate contains only text
We need to check, if the text is a valid date in the format needed by EPUB
2. date or pubdate contains no text, but <?dbtimestamp?>
We ignore any format pseudo attribute and return a date in the format
"Y-m-d"
I would propose the following change:
<xsl:template match="date|pubdate" mode="opf.metadata">
<xsl:variable name="date">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="processing-instruction('dbtimestamp')">
<xsl:call-template name="pi.dbtimestamp">
<xsl:with-param name="format">Y-m-d</xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:call-template name="format.meta.date">
<xsl:with-param name="string" select="normalize-space(.)"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<!-- ... --->
</xsl:template>
Unfortunately, this won't work. The "pi.dbtimestamp" template doesn't allow a
parameter "format". Looking into the template <xsl:variable> is used.
Could we change "pi.dbtimestamp" and use <xsl:param> instead of
<xsl:variable>? Or is there another solution that I can't see?
What do you think?
--
Gruß/Regards
Thomas Schraitle
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