Lara,

--- Lara Friedman-Shedlov <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On the contrary, the <container> element makes it possible for the
> finding
> aid to reflect the intellectual structure of the collection but
> still be
> able to reconstruct the physical order if needed.  Although I have
> never
> actually tried it myself, it should be possible to create a
> stylesheet that
> would sort the component level descriptions into order based on the
> content
> of the <container> elements.

I think it would be good to remember that there is no check for
specific datatype for the container element in the dtd. Sorting
therefore, would need to be done with this in mind.

My experience is that something in the stylesheet would need to test
if the content is numeric, alpha, or a combination (even spaces) in
order for any kind of sort to be possible. Even if the content is
strictly numeric, the sort would need to done by adding a large
number, say 10,000 to the normalized content in order for the sort to
be strictly numeric ascending or descending. (How can you elimitate
or anticipate human error?)

<xsl:apply-templates select="c">
  <xsl:sort
    select="
      normalize-space(
        child::did/descendant::container[1]
      )
      +
      10000
    "
  />
</xsl:apply-templates>

[Of course, this assumes that there are no spaces in the string.]

Maybe one of the DTD guru's on the list can give a good @ATTRIBUTE or
<ELEMENT> that would be used to do such task.

In theory, you are correct. Coding the finding aid makes it possible
to display the information in may different ways depending on the
stylesheet.

Sincerely,
Mike Ferrando
Library Technician
Music Division
Library of Congress
Washington, DC
202-707-4454



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail