On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:04:10 -0500, Joseph Kesselman
<keshlam-nospam@c...> wrote:

>mark4asp wrote:
>> if ($date > @entryDate) then
>> 	set $date = @entryDate
>
>XSLT variables are single-assignment. You need to use two separate 
>variable names, or turn the problem inside out and do the conditional 
>inside the computation of the variable's value. Which makes most sense 
>depends on the details of your stylesheet.

Thanks Joseph, I discovered that yesterday anyway reading Michael Kay on
my way home - I wish text books would make that clear early on as it's
so fundamental.

So, I think I could best procede by using different data. Instead of
this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<news>
  <page currrent="3" forwardButton="true" maxPages="490" />
  <stories>
    <story id="5842" entryDate="2007-11-12" blah blah />
    <story id="5841" entryDate="2007-11-12" blah blah />
    <story id="5840" entryDate="2007-11-12" blah blah />
    <story id="5839" entryDate="2007-11-11" blah blah />
    <story id="5838" entryDate="2007-11-11" blah blah />
    <story id="5837" entryDate="2007-11-11" blah blah />
    <story id="5836" entryDate="2007-11-11" blah blah />
    <story id="5835" entryDate="2007-11-11" blah blah />
    <story id="5834" entryDate="2007-11-11" blah blah />
    <story id="5833" entryDate="2007-11-11" blah blah />
  </stories>
</news>

I could use this instead:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<news>
  <page currrent="3" forwardButton="true" maxPages="490" />
  <stories entryDate="2007-11-12">
    <story id="5842" blah blah />
    <story id="5841" blah blah />
    <story id="5840" blah blah />
  </stories>
  <stories entryDate="2007-11-11">    
    <story id="5839" blah blah />
    <story id="5838" blah blah />
    <story id="5837" blah blah />
    <story id="5836" blah blah />
    <story id="5835" blah blah />
    <story id="5834" blah blah />
    <story id="5833" blah blah />
  </stories>
</news>

Then I can solve it with a nested loop.

>Conditionals: depending on what you're doing, the xsl:if or xsl:choose 
>directives may be the right answer 
>(http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#section-Conditional-Processing), or you may 
>want a predicate test inside an XPath expression 
>(http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#predicates). Again, which makes most sense 
>depends on the details of your stylesheet.
>
>> Finally, Does it make sense to use variable types in xsl, such as
>> integers, datetime, etc., or is everything a string?
>
>In XSLT 1.0, everything is a string until converted in the expression. 
>In XSLT 2.0 and XQuery, types become more meaningful.