Ruud Grosmann wrote:

  Dag Ruud,

> My question is: this solution looks clumsy. How can I improve it?

  I don't have the time to analyze your stylesheet, but a few
remarks...  It seems you use a string to represent structured values.
Why don't you use something structured?  In XSLT 2.0, you can pass a
sequence of strings like this:

    <xsl:with-param name="style" select="'italic', 'bold'"/>

  Unfortunately, you can't have nested sequences, so you can't have
something like, say:

    <!-- Do not try this at home! -->
    <xsl:with-param name="values" select="
        ('style', ('italic', 'bold')),
        ('key',   ('val1', 'val2', ...))"/>

  But you can use several parameters if suitable:

    <xsl:with-param name="style" select="'italic', 'bold'"/>
    <xsl:with-param name="key"   select="'val1', 'val2', ..."/>

  Or you can always use XML:

    <xsl:with-param name="values">
       <style>
          <italic/>
          <bold/>
       </style>
       <key>
          <val1/>
          <val2/>
          ...
       </key>
    </xsl:with-param>

  Instead of contains(), you will then be able to use regular XPath
set operators and mapping techniques:

    <xsl:template name="get_attributes" as="xs:string?">
       <xsl:param name="style" as="xs:string*"/>
       <xsl:variable name="map">
          <i key="bold"   name="BLD"/>
          <i key="italic" name="ITA"/>
       </xsl:variable>
       <xsl:sequence select="$map/i[@key = $style][1]/@name"/>
    </xsl:template>

  And if you use a function instead of a named template, you can use
the following to get the element name (but that's really a matter of
taste):

    my:get-element-name(('bold', 'italic'))

  Regards,

-- 
Florent Georges
http://www.fgeorges.org/