XSL : make an HTML link before a XML tag/node

Question

As I'm working on a special XSL for a TEI text, I do encounter a big problem. In TEI specifications, standard notes from a book are encoded like that (assuming that albatros is the word that, on a sheet of paper, would receive the note) :

<p>— Cher Cléonte, me dit-il, dès que <pb xml:id="nn2_4" n="4"/> je fus entré dans sa 
chambre, je vous ai envoyé chercher afin que vous prissiez part au divertissement que je
dois avoir aujourd'hui. Je dînai<note type=glossary n="nn2_4n1">déjeunai</note> il y a quelque temps en
un lieu où il se rencontra trois de ces messieurs qui font profession de ne rien ignorer

which is not very xml-friendly, but… that's the standard. What I would like to do is to be able, through an XSL processing, to add some HTML surrounding "dînai" (and the same for every words that is just before a <note> tag).

<span id="nn2_4n1" class="glossary">dînai</span>

(the content of the note is located in another place of the web page.)

The purpose of this is, for instance, to make the content of the note to appear over the word dînai on a simple "hover".

How to select and do something on the last word before a tag ? Is there a way doing this ? With XSL ? In another way ?

Thanks a lot for your answers ! Christophe

P. S: : I'm very sorry for my terrible english.

Answer 1

Assuming an XSLT 2.0 processor you can use

<xsl:stylesheet
  version="2.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
  exclude-result-prefixes="xs">

<xsl:template match="@* | node()" mode="#all">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="@* , node()" mode="#current"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*[note]">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:for-each-group select="node()" group-ending-with="note">
      <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="current-group()[last()][self::note]">
          <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()[position() lt last() - 2]"/>
          <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()[last() - 1]" mode="wrap"/>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
          <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()"/>
        </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:for-each-group>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="text()" mode="wrap">
  <xsl:analyze-string select="." regex="\w+$">
    <xsl:matching-substring>
      <span id="{current-group()[last()]/@n}" class="{current-group()[last()]/@type}">
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
      </span>
    </xsl:matching-substring>
    <xsl:non-matching-substring>
      <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </xsl:non-matching-substring>
  </xsl:analyze-string>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

It transforms the input

<p>— Cher Cléonte, me dit-il, dès que <pb xml:id="nn2_4" n="4"/> je fus entré dans sa 
chambre, je vous ai envoyé chercher afin que vous prissiez part au divertissement que je
dois avoir aujourd'hui. Je dînai<note type="glossary" n="nn2_4n1">déjeunai</note> il y a quelque temps en
un lieu où il se rencontra trois de ces messieurs qui font profession de ne rien ignorer</p>

into the result

<p>— Cher Cléonte, me dit-il, dès que  je fus entré dans sa 
chambre, je vous ai envoyé chercher afin que vous prissiez part au divertissement que je
dois avoir aujourd'hui. Je <span id="nn2_4n1" class="glossary">dînai</span> il y a quelque temps en
un lieu où il se rencontra trois de ces messieurs qui font profession de ne rien ignorer</p>

That currently drops the note element from the input, if you want it processed at its place change

<xsl:when test="current-group()[last()][self::note]">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()[position() lt last() - 2]"/>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()[last() - 1]" mode="wrap"/>
</xsl:when>

to

<xsl:when test="current-group()[last()][self::note]">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()[position() lt last() - 2]"/>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()[last() - 1]" mode="wrap"/>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()[last()]"/>
</xsl:when>

I have assumed a note is preceded by a plain text node as in your sample, if we had e.g. Je <b>dînai</b><note type="glossary" n="nn2_4n1">déjeunai</note> it is more complicated.

And I have only tested with the one simple input sample, test yourself with more complex ones and report back if you encounter problems.