Re: sorting, was: Version 3.0 now available!

[Nigel S. <nig...@us...>]

> > How do you sort that, other than in document order?
> > And if you add a further nnn <p> nodes - the norm in document files -
how
> can
> > they be used if not in document order? In what order can the 'nodes' of,
> say,
> > a Shakespeare play be processed other than the one he wrote?!
> >..
>
> Yes. And also I could imagine a dozen other cases, except my current one
> where I'd need it.
> Imagine you want to build a table-of-contents for an XHTML page.
> The most reasonable expression to me seems to be:
>     //h1 | //h2 | //h3 | //h4 | //h5 | //h6
> and then process this e.g. building a nested list.
> It's very important here that an h2 following an h1 in the original
document
> can be understood as belonging to this h1 as a sub-heading.
> (I do the above in an MSXML4-based Content Management System.)

Ok I totally agree that doc order is the most useful, but how about this
scenario:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<XmlDatabase>
 <Sermons>
  <Sermon RecordId="1">
     <Date>1-Jan-92</Date>
     <CatalogueNo>BRJ 01</CatalogueNo>
     <Speaker>Brian Russell-Jones</Speaker>
   </Sermon>
  <Sermon RecordId="3">
      <Date>1-Jan-92</Date>
      <CatalogueNo>WS 01</CatalogueNo>
      <Speaker>Wayne Sutton</Speaker>
   </Sermon>
   <Sermon RecordId="4">
    <Date>1-Mar-92</Date>
    <CatalogueNo>BRJ 04</CatalogueNo>
    <Speaker>Brian Russell-Jones</Speaker>
   </Sermon>
   <Sermon RecordId="5">
    <Date>1-Apr-92</Date>
    <CatalogueNo>WS 02</CatalogueNo>
    <Speaker>Wayne Sutton</Speaker>
   </Sermon>
  </Sermons>
 </XmlDatabase>

You want to search for all the sermons, but have them sorted by date,
catalogue, or speaker.

If sorted by date you get:
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[1]
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[2]
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[3]
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[4]

If sorted by speaker you get:
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[1]
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[3]
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[2]
/XmlDatabase[1]/Sermon[4]

etc.

What I'll try to do is to make doc order the default output, but there may
still be occasions where sorting the data by some other criteria is useful.

Nigel