Re: [xslt-conformance] xsl:number issue: from and count have the samepattern

[Jeff Kenton <jkenton@datapower.com>]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, David Marston/Cambridge/IBM wrote:

..
..
..The Xalan test case numbering63 has been questioned by Pranav and by
..Jonas Sicking of the Mozilla project. It has:
..<xsl:number level="single" from="a" count="a|b|c|d|e" format="1"/>
..but the key issue is really:
..<xsl:number level="single" from="a" count="a"/>

    ...

..I conclude that the trouble occurs because it says "descendants"
..rather than "elements on the descendant-or-self axis" and so the <a>
..that is the self rather than a descendant is not counted. Without a
..from, the verbiage has a convoluted way of saying "count all the <a>
..nodes found so far" and you get what you expect, as in numbering28.
..What you expect with a from is probably "reset the count each time
..you encounter a from node" but if it's the same as what you're
..counting, is that a 0 or a 1? (Notice that neither is practical.)
..
..What do you think, and why?
..A) It should be 0; take "descendant" in the strict sense
..B) It should be 1; counting begins at 1
..C) Some other output?
..D) Must refer this to the XSL WG for resolution
..

C) I think counting results in 0 because "self" is specifically omitted.  
However, the spec seems to indicate that the result should be the empty
string in this case, rather than 0.  To me, the XSLT 2.0 spec would
require the empty string also.

-- 

Jeff Kenton
DataPower Technology, Inc.
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http://www.datapower.com/products.shtml