Ah, that makes real sense. Thanks! That last quote was a good one.

Thanks again, Rob



Dimitre Novatchev wrote:
> Another quote from the XPath 1.0 Spec, which describes this topic even more
> precisely:
>
> "NOTE: The ancestor, descendant, following, preceding and self axes
> partition a document (ignoring attribute and namespace nodes): they do not
> overlap and together they contain all the nodes in the document."
>
>
> Cheers,
> Dimitre Novatchev
>
>
> "Dimitre Novatchev" <x@y...> wrote in message
> news:42eee2d8$0$60338$892e7fe2@a......
> >
> > <rob.guitar.rob@g...> wrote in message
> > news:1122945838.963427.304630@z......
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> My last few posts have been revolving aroung the same problem, and I
> >> still cant solve it and I would be really appreciate if anyone could
> >> spot a problem.
> >>
> >> a section of my XML goes like
> >>
> >> ....
> >>     <parent>
> >>         <child>
> >>             <grandchild1>
> >>             <grandchild2>
> >>         <child>
> >>     <parent>
> >>
> >> /...
> >>
> >> I need to describe a numeric link between grandchild elements and the
> >> child elements.
> >>
> >> I have been using count(preceding::*) to id the cells numerically:
> >
> > It is not possible to identify a node uniquely using only one axis.
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> <xsl:template select="grandchild1|grandchild2">
> >>  <MyID>
> >>     Child:      <xsl:value-of select="count(../preceding::*)"/>
> >>     Grandchild: <xsl:value-of select="count(./preceding::*)"/>
> >>  </MyID>
> >> </xsl:template>
> >>
> >>
> >> However, the first grandchild1 element that runs this has the same
> >> count as the child element. (35 and 35).  The second grandchild element
> >> that runs is incremented by one as expected, 35 and 36, meaning it
> >> seems 1 too low.  The obvious problem is the first counts are returned
> >> the same, negating the idea of unique numeric ID's.
> >>
> >> Are these results to be expected?
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> > The "preceding" and "ancestor" axis are non-overlapping and can be thought
> > of as the X and Y axis in a two-dimensional space (plane).
> >
> > To quote the XPath 1.0 spec:
> >
> > "the preceding axis contains all nodes in the same document as the context
> > node that are before the context node in document order, excluding any
> > ancestors and excluding attribute nodes and namespace nodes"
> >
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#axes
> >
> >
> >> I do not know why/how the ../ and ./
> >> return the same value (surely the ../preceding has come back a node in
> >> that first case and therefore should be -1 of the grandchild1?)
> >>
> >> I know a simple fix is just to add one onto all of the grandchilds
> >> (count(./preceding::*)+1) but it seems slight dodgey, i.e. a fix to a
> >> potential problem in my XSL.
> >>
> >> I would really appreciate is anyone could help me understand why this
> >> does not work, so that I can fix it properly.
> >
> > An unique ID can be constructed taking both the "ancestor" and "preceding"
> > axis into account and generating a *pair* of numbers.
> >
> > Another way is to use xsl:number
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Dimitre Novatchev
> >
> >>
> >> Any help will again be most appreciated.
> >>
> >> Thanks, Rob.
> >>
> >
> >