At 2007-10-15 11:09 +0000, astragh wrote:
>Hi to the forum,
>
>We currently use xsl fo for styling our xml.
>Our application takes user submitted content and adds it to our
>database where we then extract this content and transform it into an
>xml tree. This is then forwarded to our .xsl file and then produces
>the PDF.

Sounds good so far!

>We would like to allow our application to accept html tags using a
>wysiwyg module above the textarea where the client can then format
>their descriptions with various tags i.e. <b>, <i>, <ul> etc.

Fine .... but I'm guessing this process does not mandate the "proper"
use of element start and end tags (nesting, completion, etc.).

>This works ok when the user is forwarded to the next JSP page all
>formatting is saved to the database and displayed correctly, further
>calls to display this page gets the information from the database and
>again displays all information.

Right ... because HTML browsers are forgiving of discrepancies that
would otherwise be considered errors in a well-formedness check. Any
mess entered by the users is acceptable to the end processing in the
browser client.

>The problem is when we request this
>view in the PDF format XSL can't handle the html tags. Is there a way
>that I can make the request to the database during, after or before
>we process our XML tree and swap out the html tags with xsl? And
>would this work?

Do you have the opportunity in the process to run "tidy"? This is an
open tool that converts tag soup into XML, which is then suitable for XSLT:

http://tidy.sourceforge.net/

The only input to XSLT is well-formed XML and this would give it to
you. HTML of any SGML flavour (messy or not messy) is
unacceptable. XHTML is acceptable, but then you wouldn't be having
any problems because it would be well-formed.

The painful alternative is to use XSLT 2.0 (which isn't painful),
read in the HTML fragments as a text string, and to do your own
string analysis in a piecemeal fashion to reconstruct the structure
from the mess of tag soup from the user. Not at all pleasant, but doable.

>Sorry if this is a little brief I have just inherited the project and
>only starting to make some ground on the understanding. And I am a
>total newbie to this :(

Have fun!

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

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