Introduction
This set of documents shows what the inputs and outputs look like in my
XML/XSL/CSS documents.
The XSL processing converts the documents to HTML - this amounts to
creating tables for hand diagrams and auctions, converting codes like "2H" to
, deciding whether to put white-spaces in holdings,
etc. The resulting HTML generated has plenty of
class
attributes added to the <div>, <p>, and <span> tags which
makes additional formatting customization via Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS) possible. These documents are using my
article.css. Most issues
like font sizes, colors and backgrounds are left to the CSS. I could,
for example, make the diamond and heart symbols black with a simple
change to the CSS.
Many of the formatting decisions I've made are based on the
recommendations in Richard Pavlicek's
Bridge Writing Style
Guide. The goal is to make the input XML document simple,
human-writable and readable, and use the XSL to enforce the output
standard where possible. So, while the input documents use
T for the 10-spot, the XSL writes out "10." And while
the input has no spaces between cards in holdings, as in
QT654, the XSL prints
Q-10-6-5-4 in
paragraph contexts - seperating cards with spaces in diagrams ala:
A K Q
J 10 9 8 7
6 5 4 3 2
—
10 9 8
A K Q
J 7
6 5 4 3 2
Other style decisions I made on my own. For example, when red suit
symbols occur in paragraphs, I've chosen to make them slightly darker
than the red that occurs in diagrams because I find that the bright
red in the middle of paragraphs interrupts the "flow" to the eye.
This can be adjusted in the Cascading Style Sheet easily. The color
I've settled on is 20% darker than pure red.
Style sheets for auction tables still do not handle one-sided
auctions - I'd like the <auction> tag to take an attribute which
flags the auction as one-sided (not necessarily uncontested, but
perhaps with only a few bids.)
The goal is for the XML to represent possible bridge events, and have the
XSL do transformations for presentation purposes. So the writer would
write three passes rather than "All Pass." If the XSL formatter finds a
situation where "All Pass" is an appropriate substitution, it can make
the substitution. Note, not all instances if three passes, or even four
passes, represent the end of an auction, if there has been a pass out of
turn. This makes the XSL somewhat complicated.
Terms
These definitions may seem pedantic, but sometimes the words are
used less precisely.
- Seat
- One of the seats in an auction or card diagram. When in an XML
'seat' attribute, it can be one of 'E', 'W', 'N', or 'S'. For
example,
<call seat='W' code='2S'/>.
In the middle of an auction with no dealer seat specified, the seat
can be one of 'dealer', 'LHO', 'partner', or 'RHO.'
- Hand
- References the cards being held by a particular player. This can
be either 13 cards at the start of a deal, or some lesser number,
representing a later state in the play.
- Deal
- A deal is distribution of 52 cards to four hands in each seat.
- Board
- A board is a deal in the context of a competition - information
like the dealer, vulnerability, partscore (in rubber bridge),
etc.
- Play Record
- The details of a played board - might include players, auction,
contract, cards played.
Source Code
This is an open source project,
hosted on GitHub.
which is used to generate my bridge articles, including these test documents. There is a separate branch for the XSL that generates the mobile version of the HTML.