Styling part of a docbook procedure using XSL

Question

I'm trying to affect the properties of the fo:list-block within a docbook 5 procedure. What I want to do is take the following docbook XML code:

<procedure>
    <title>Eating a banana</title>
    <step><para>Find banana</para></step>
    <step><para>Peel banana</para></step>
    <step><para>Stick banana in mouth</para></step>
<procedure>

and affect the FO output of just the steps (a list), not the title.

Using this:

<xsl:template match="d:procedure">
    <fo:block border-left-width="1pt" border-left-style="solid" padding-left="0.25in">
        <xsl:apply-imports />
    </fo:block>
</xsl:template>

Gets me something like this:

|
| Procedure 1: Eating a banana
|   1. Find banana
|   2. Peal banana
|   3. Stick banana in mouth
|

What I'm trying to get is:

Procedure 1: Eating a banana
  |   1. Find banana
  |   2. Peal banana
  |   3. Stick banana in mouth

Trying to match to <step> is invalid, since docbook turns those into fo:list-block (fo:block as a descendant of fo:list-block generates an "invalid child" error).

Docbook has a xsl:attribute-set for <procedures>, but as far as I can tell, that can only be used to style the entire block (similar to the template match='d:procedure', not just the list.

Answer 1

Here is how it can be done.

1. Add this version of the "procedure" template (the original is in lists.xsl) to your customization layer:

   <xsl:template match="d:procedure">
     <xsl:variable name="id">
       <xsl:call-template name="object.id"/>
     </xsl:variable>
   
     <!-- Preserve order of PIs and comments -->
     <xsl:variable name="preamble"
           select="*[not(self::d:step
                     or self::d:title
                     or self::d:titleabbrev)]
                   |comment()[not(preceding-sibling::d:step)]
                   |processing-instruction()[not(preceding-sibling::d:step)]"/>
   
     <xsl:variable name="steps" 
                   select="d:step
                           |comment()[preceding-sibling::d:step]
                           |processing-instruction()[preceding-sibling::d:step]"/>
   
     <xsl:call-template name="formal.object.heading"/>  
   
     <fo:block id="{$id}" xsl:use-attribute-sets="procedure.properties list.block.spacing"
           border-left-width="1pt" border-left-style="solid" padding-left="0.25in">
   
       <xsl:apply-templates select="$preamble"/>
   
       <fo:list-block xsl:use-attribute-sets="list.block.spacing"
                      provisional-distance-between-starts="2em"
                      provisional-label-separation="0.2em">
         <xsl:apply-templates select="$steps"/>
       </fo:list-block>
   
     </fo:block>
   </xsl:template>
   

   <xsl:call-template name="formal.object.heading"/> (which returns a fo:block with the procedure title) is executed before the block with the border is being output. I have also simplified the template by removing code that handles placement of the title.

2. Add text-indent to the formal.title.properties attribute-set:

   <xsl:attribute-set name="formal.title.properties" 
                  use-attribute-sets="normal.para.spacing">
     <xsl:attribute name="text-indent">
       <xsl:choose>
         <xsl:when test="self::d:procedure">-30pt</xsl:when>
         <xsl:otherwise>0pt</xsl:otherwise>
       </xsl:choose>
     </xsl:attribute>
   </xsl:attribute-set>
   

This will push the procedure title to the left (but leave other titles alone).

Answer 2

I came up with this idea. While it works fine for single-level procedures, anything with substeps will cause problems.

<xsl:template match="d:step">
    <fo:list-item margin-left="0.25in" padding-left='1em' border-left-width='2pt' border-left-color="gray" border-left-style='solid'>
        <fo:list-item-label start-indent="0.40in" end-indent="label-end()">
            <fo:block>
                <xsl:number format="1."/>
            </fo:block>
        </fo:list-item-label>       
        <fo:list-item-body start-indent="3.5pc">
            <fo:block>
                <xsl:apply-templates />
            </fo:block>
        </fo:list-item-body>
    </fo:list-item>
</xsl:template>