Generating HTML from XSLT using <xsl:copy>

[Andy Dingley]

From a thread over in c.i.w.a.h
"RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT"
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html/msg/f112c230061ffe86


As is well-known, the XSLT HTML output method should generate <br>
rather than <br /> or <br></br>
From: <http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#section-HTML-Output-Method>

:> The html output method should not output an end-tag for empty
elements. For HTML 4.0, the empty elements
:> are area, base, basefont, br, col, frame, hr, img, input,
isindex, link, meta and param. For example, an element
:> written as <br/> or <br></br> in the stylesheet should be output
as <br>.

So what happens if this "br" element is generated by an <xsl:copy>
from an XHTML input document, bound to the XHTML namespace URI ?

) ?

What do practical transform engines do here? Are they consistent?

 

[Bjoern Hoehrmann]

* Andy Dingley wrote in comp.text.xml:

So what happens if this "br" element is generated by an <xsl:copy>
from an XHTML input document, bound to the XHTML namespace URI ?

Well, read the text right before what you quoted?

The html output method should not output an element differently from
the xml output method unless the expanded-name of the element has a
null namespace URI; an element whose expanded-name has a non-null
namespace URI should be output as XML.

Some time ago I wrote a quick and dirty XHTML-to-HTML XSLT document,
see <http://www.bjoernsworld.de/temp/xhtml-to-html4.xslt>.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Well, read the text right before what you quoted?

RTFM you mean?

The html output method should not output an element differently from
the xml output method unless the expanded-name of the element has a
null namespace URI;

Thanks! I'd never noticed that. I'd always assumed that XHTML and the
standard XHTML namespace URI was treated as HTML.

 

[Martin Honnen]

I'd always assumed that XHTML and the
standard XHTML namespace URI was treated as HTML.

With XSLT 2.0 there is an output method 'xhtml' which is supposed to
serialize XHTML so that it can be served as text/html, see
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-xquery-serialization/#xhtml-output>