Hello guys,

I was wondering if it was possible to reference a boolean predicate in
a variable. Basically I want to do with the boolean predicate what you
would do with any other variable; I want it to apply to many places
without having to update all those different locations if the
predicate needs to change.

This is not a full stylesheet, just snippets of the idea

  <xsl:variable name="list-orphans-widows.properties">
    position()=last()-1 or position()=last()-2 or (position()='1' and
position()!=last()) or (position()='2' and position()!=last())
  </xsl:variable>

  <xsl:template match="ListB | CELLListB">
    <fo:list-block padding-after="12pt">

      <xsl:variable name="ListBItemsRTF">
        <ListB>
          <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
          <xsl:for-each select="ListBItem | CELLListB">
            <xsl:choose>
              <xsl:when test="$list-orphans-widows.properties">
                <xsl:copy>
                  <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
                  <xsl:attribute name="keep-with-next">always</
xsl:attribute>
                  <xsl:apply-templates/>
                </xsl:copy>
              </xsl:when>
              <xsl:otherwise>
                <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
              </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
          </xsl:for-each>
        </ListB>
      </xsl:variable>

      <xsl:for-each select="exsl:node-set($ListBItemsRTF)">
        <xsl:apply-templates select="//ListBItem | //CELLListBItem"/>
      </xsl:for-each>

    </fo:list-block>
  </xsl:template>

It works cleanly when the predicate is straight up in test="", but the
predicate yields true in all cases when I try to reference the
variable. Is what I'm trying to do possible in XSLT?

Regards
Jean-Francois Michaud