Question

I have an xslt style sheet that formats the data from my xml file into a table with a single column based on whether there is an image present or not. There is a fair amount of data so the column is too long though and i want to try splitting the current column into 2 equal columns. And idea how i can do this?

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
<table border="0" bordercolor="#606060" style="width:200px">
  <tr bgcolor="white" width="200px">
  </tr>
  <xsl:for-each select="NewDataSet/Manufacturer">
    <tr>
      <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="Image = 'none'">
          <td bgcolor="#dfdfdf">
            <a href="Vehicles.aspx?Manufacturer={ManufacturerID}" style="text-decoration:none;" runat="server">
              <xsl:value-of select="Manufacturer"/>
            </a>
          </td>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
          <td>
            <a href="Vehicles.aspx?Manufacturer={ManufacturerID}" style="text-decoration:none;" runat="server">
              <im alt="{Manufacturer}" src="Images/Manufacturers/{Image}" style="border-width: 0px; width: 50px; "/>
            </a>
          </td>
        </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
    </tr>
  </xsl:for-each>
</table>
</xsl:template>

Answer 1

how about something like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
  <table border="0" bordercolor="#606060" style="width:200px">
    <tr bgcolor="white" width="200px">
    </tr>
    <tr>
    <xsl:for-each select="NewDataSet/Manufacturer">
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test="position() mod 2 = 0">
                <!-- so essentialy on even numbered elements process the current and next elements -->
                <td>
                    <xsl:call-template name="do-cell-content">
                        <xsl:with-param name="node" select="."/>
                    </xsl:call-template>
                </td>
                <td>
                    <xsl:call-template name="do-cell-content">
                        <xsl:with-param name="node" select="../Manufacturer[position()+1]"/>
                    </xsl:call-template>
                </td>
            <xsl:when>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:for-each>
    </tr>
  </table>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I’ve extracted the part that writes the content of the cells and the <xsl:choose> part from your example to another xsl:template called do-cell-content