RE: Clever ideas to do toc...

Andrew Bunner (bunner@massquantities.com)
Tue, 08 Sep 1998 15:24:45 -0700

>You could swipe a good idea from the relational database folks, and number
>the tree nodes sequentially, and then select a sub-tree based on a range of
>node numbers. I've lost the original reference (from DBMS Magazine) but
>here's a quick example from a similar problem:
>
>Hierarchical organizational trees:
>
>1. Company (1,6)
>2. Department A (2,4)
>3. Group A1 (3,3)
>4. Group A2 (4,4)
>5. Department B (5,6)
>6. Group B1 (6,6)
>
>This allows you to represent the whole company, hierarchical info, etc. in
>one table. A node that contains additional nodes can be expanded by
>showing the range of nodes listed for that parent node . It doesn't handle
>more complicated relationships, such as multiple parents, though.

This sounds like a good idea, and the way one might do this in XML is by
using the id attribute and then doing some kind of comparison on it.
Unforunately, I can't really explore this possibility because this is one
of only two features missing from xt (the XSL processor I'm using).
id(name) in patterns is specifically mentioned in the xt release notes as
not working. I don't know of a better XSL processor (that implements the
working draft)... if anyone else does, please share.

Thanks for your input! If it looks like I'm on the wrong page re:
implementation, don't hesitate to shove me in the correct direction.

-- Andrew

Andrew Bunner
President, Founder Mass Quantities, Inc.
Professional Supplements for the Perfect Physique
http://www.massquantities.com