Lone Wolf Development Forums - [Mac only] Custom Output Defect

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- - [Mac only] Custom Output Defect (http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=22062)

[Mac only] Custom Output Defect

(Full Disclosure... I'm reporting this problem after examining files sent to me by users of my custom sheet who are using the Mac version of Hero Lab. I will install the Mac version myself later this week, but felt that this was important enough to go ahead and get to you.)

It looks like the XSLT transformation done by the Mac version of Hero Lab has a serious problem for custom sheet developers. I'm going to describe it here -- if it would help, I could also put together a simple "test" stylesheet to demonstrate the problem.

I suspect that this can be fixed by simply changing an option on whatever XSLT engine the Mac version is using.

Problem: Every <xsl:value-of> produces a new-line and indentation spaces

Code:

Assume the player is named Bob.  Then this line:

   "<xsl:value-of select="@playername"/>"



Should get transformed to:

   "Bob"



But instead it gets tranformed to:

   "Bob

   "

As you can see, a new-line has been inserted immediately after output, and then spaces have been added to indent the following line.

Because of the way HTML handles whitespace, this wouldn't be a problem for anything placed inside a simple HTML element. However, it breaks any output that has to be inside a string literal, which includes all HTML attributes as well as JavaScript strings.

My guess is that the XSLT engine you're using has an option to enable/disable output formatting, and this problem may be solved by disabling that formatting.

Bumping in the hopes of a fix. Would very much like to use the new version of AncientOne's sheet and I'm on Mac only.

FYI... I've since confirmed this problem myself with the Mac version of Hero Lab. :(

I thought I might be able to change this behavior by specifying indent="no", like this:

Code:

<xsl:output method="html" indent="no"/>

... but no joy.

Another FYI...

I've just released a version of my custom sheet that works with the Mac version of Hero Lab, but wanted to be clear that I didn't solve the defect this thread refers to. Instead, I rewrote a critical part of the sheet so that it no longer "exercises" this defect.

In other words, this defect is no longer a problem for me but it could still be a problem for other custom sheet authors in the future.