Hello,

I am trying to process the first node in a sequence of like nodes differently than the others (somewhat). Here is a sample and I'll explain.
Source doc:
and my attempt at the stylesheet
What I am trying to do is bring the first line of bodytext up into the same paragraph with the heading. All other bodytext elements should be in their own paragraphs. Such as:

<Para FirstLineIndent=7>heading text bodytext1</Para>
<Para FirstLineIndent=7>bodytext2</Para>
<Para FirstLineIndent=7>bodytext3</Para>
<Para FirstLineIndent=7>bodytext4</Para>

I have tried using the position() function to check if the bodytext element is the first in the series, but cannot seem to get this to work. Some of the errors I see are for un-matched pairs of Para tags, etc.

Are there any suggestions as to how to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance,
Dan

You are testing whether the parent of the current element has a bodytext element whose position is one.

You want

test="not(preceding-sibling::bodytext)"

Better still, write one template rule with match="bodytext[1]" and another with match="bodytext".

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Michael,

Thank you, that got me half-way there. I still have a problem in that after I execute the first "bodytext" element, the built-in 'apply-templates' fires and processes the remaining "bodytext" elements. This first "bodytext" element also needs to fire within the "Para" tags, currently it is writing its output after the "/Para" from the heading rule.

11/14 - latest xslt is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:template match="root">
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="heading">
        <Para FirstLineIndent="7">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>


        </Para>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="bodytext[1]">
        <HardSp/><HardSp/>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="."/>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="bodytext">
        <Para FirstLineIndent="7">
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </Para>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


Any thoughts?

Dan

Alright, I have found "the error of my ways" and will post so that others may avoid my mistake, unless I am the only one to do this.

When calling a specific template rule from within another, I had neglected to fully qualify the XPath location of the node to process (didn't include the //), instead only listing its name in the "Select" attribute. This resulted in the rule looking for a child node with that name, and I was trying to process a sibling. Hence it wasn't being fired when I wanted it to. Also, once corrected this first "bodytext" node was fired again via the built-in "Apply-Templates" rule. To avoid this I used a sibling test, to only process those "bodytext" nodes after the first one. So I combined some of my trial and error with Michael's reply from above.

The final XSLT is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:template match="root">
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="heading">
        <Para FirstLineIndent="7">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="//bodytext[1]" mode="header"/>
        </Para>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="bodytext[1]" mode="header">
        <HardSp/><HardSp/>
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="bodytext">
        <xsl:if test="preceding-sibling::bodytext">
            <Para FirstLineIndent="7">
                <xsl:value-of select="."/>
            </Para>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Best regards to all,
Dan