Quotes corrupts text-to-speech

Gadget · March 20th, 2006, 11:22 PM

Hi,
I am using an RSS feed to create a paragraph of news headlines (within an ASP page) that is then processed as text-to-speech. Everything is fine until the feed contains quotation marks which corrupts the formatting for the text-to-speech. Apostrophies are ok.

I have tried experimenting with 'translate', but my knowledge of XSLT is miniscule and I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

Below is the XSL code followed by the ASP:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" ?> 
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> 
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="iso-8859-1" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/> 
<xsl:template match="*"> 
<xsl:for-each select="//*[local-name()='item']"> 
<xsl:if test="position() &lt; 7">
<xsl:value-of select="*[local-name()='description']" disable-output-escaping="yes"/> 
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each> 
</xsl:template> 
<xsl:template match="/"> 
<xsl:apply-templates/> 
</xsl:template> 
</xsl:stylesheet>


<%
Sub getXML(sourceFile)
     dim styleFile
     dim source, style
     styleFile = Server.MapPath("news2.xsl")

     set source = Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.DomDocument")
     source.async = false
     source.setProperty "ServerHTTPRequest", true
     source.load CStr(sourceFile)

     set style = Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.DomDocument")
     style.async = false
     style.load styleFile

     source.transformNodeToObject style, Response
     set source = nothing
     set style = nothing
End Sub
%>

Cheers,
Ben

mhkay · March 21st, 2006, 05:06 AM

I've no idea where in your code you want to replace quotes by apostrophes so I can't help you with the immediate question. But I can make some general comments about your code, which you might find helpful.

<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="iso-8859-1" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>

Is your stylesheet really producing XML? As far as I can see, it only produces text. In that case, use method="text". Producing XML and then trying to suppress its inherent XML features by using "omit-xml-declaration" and "disable-output-escaping" isn't the right way to do it.

<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:for-each select="//*[local-name()='item']">

In a template that matches every element, it's usually wrong to then use select="//*" which selects everything. In this case I think you're only invoking the template to match the outermost element, in which case the logic might as well go in the match="/" template.

The actual selection //*[local-name()='item'] suggests you are ignoring namespaces. That's normally not recommended practice - but because RSS namespaces are such a disaster area, it's understandable.

<xsl:value-of select="*[local-name()='description']" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>

Presumably this is where you want to translate quotes to apostrophes?

Try

<xsl:variable name="quot">"</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="apos">'</xsl:variable>

<xsl:value of select="translate(*[local-name()='description'],
$quot, $apos)"/>

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

Gadget · March 21st, 2006, 07:43 AM

Michael you are an absolute star! :D

Thank you very much, it works fine now:

http://www.blackice.co.uk/news.asp

Cheers,

Ben