Converting straight quotes to smart quotes in xslt 1.0

sunnykeerthi · May 20th, 2013, 10:21 AM

Hi,
I've the below xml

HTML Code:

<para>A number of the offences set out in the Companies Ordinance are expressed to apply to "officers" of the company. "Officer" includes directors, managers and the company secretary: Companies Ordinance, s.2(1).</para>

here actually the in the input the quotes given are " but i want to convert it to smart quotes. i used the below xslt for this.

HTML Code:

<xsl:template match="para/text()">
<xsl:when test="contains(.,$quot)">
<xsl:value-of select="translate(.,$quot,'“')"/>
<xsl:value-of select="translate(substring-after(.,$quot),$quot,'”')"/>
</xsl:when>
</xsl:template>

but i am getting below ooutput.

HTML Code:

A number of the offences set out in the Companies Ordinance are expressed to apply to “officers“ of the company. “Officer“ includes directors, managers and the company secretary: Companies Ordinance, s.2(1).
but i want to get it as below.

HTML Code:

A number of the offences set out in the Companies Ordinance are expressed to apply to “officers” of the company. “Officer” includes directors, managers and the company secretary: Companies Ordinance, s.2(1).

please let me know how do i solve this.

Thanks

mhkay · May 20th, 2013, 11:19 AM

Well, for starters, I wouldn't attempt this in XSLT 1.0 unless I really had to. 2.0 is so much better for this kind of task.

But whatever your programming language, you need to specify the task. Are you going to assume that the quotes match properly in pairs, and that odd-numbered instances can be replaced by opening quote and even-numbered instances by closing quote? Or do you want some smarter validation?

I think you need a recursive template something like this:

Code:

<xsl:variable name="q">"</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="smart-quotes">`'</xsl:variable>
<xsl:template name="replace-quotes">
  <xsl:param name="in" select="false()"/>
  <xsl:param name="count" select="1"/>
  <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="contains($in, $q)">
      <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($in, $q)"/>
      <xsl:value-of select="substring($smart-quotes, $count mod 2 + 1, 1)"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="replace-quotes">
         <xsl:with-param name="in" select="substring-after($in, $q)"/>
         <xsl:with-param name="count" select="$count + 1"/>
      </
    </
    <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:value-of select="$in"/>
    </
  </
</