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Restricting the letters used in a numbering generated by a xalan transformation

I am looking for a way to not have some letters in the numbering of chapters generated by xalan in an .xml to .fo transformation.
I am using org.apache.xalan.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl to transform an .xml file into an .fo file to later make a PDF out of it. In the xml file I have some numbered chapters like so :
<prcitem2 numbering="9">
They are transformed in the .fo like so :
(This block is inside an fo:list-item-label, inside an fo:list-item, but I am on mobile and can't edit it properly. Sorry)
<fo:block>Й.</fo:block>
The xsl in charge of the transformation is :
<xsl:when test="ancestor-or-self::prcitem2">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="($language = 'ru')">
<xsl:number count="prcitem2" format="А."/>
</xsl:when>
</xsl:choose>
But my Russian comrades have informed me that some of their letters can't be used in numbering as it is not allowed by ATA and Russian standards (e.g. Й, З (that's not a 3) and some others).
Is there a way to forbid the use of these letters ?

As I mentioned in comments, I don't see a way to "fix" the built-in xsl:number algorithm and I suggest you replace it with your own.
In the following template, replace the alpha parameter's value with the Cyrillic characters you want to use. Everything else is self-adjusting.
Note that the input numbering is expected to start at zero, so call the template with the decimal parameter's value being = "$your-number - 1".
<xsl:template name="dec-to-alpha">
<xsl:param name="decimal"/>
<xsl:param name="alpha" select="'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'"/>
<xsl:variable name="base" select="string-length($alpha)"/>
<xsl:variable name="bit" select="$decimal mod $base"/>
<xsl:variable name="char" select="substring($alpha, $bit + 1, 1)"/>
<xsl:variable name="next" select="floor($decimal div $base)"/>
<xsl:if test="$next">
<xsl:call-template name="dec-to-alpha">
<xsl:with-param name="decimal" select="$next - 1"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:value-of select="$char"/>
</xsl:template>
Demo: https://xsltfiddle.liberty-development.net/94rmq74

XSLT check if String is inside a set

I am trying to check if a String is contained within a set. I have an Excel sheet that I convert to an xml file; example:
Excel sheet on left and converted sheet on right (RowData.xml):
So I have an xml file where those set of numbers may or may not be there. For example, the source xml may look like this:
Source.xml:
<Data>
<Number>5556781234</Number>
<Number>5556781235</Number>
<Number>5556781236</Number>
</Data>
As you see it can stop anywhere. The source xml file may have all the numbers listed in RowData.xml or it may have only 1 or more. So my question is, how would I check for that in my xslt file?
I want to do this:
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<!-- This is the Excel sheet converted to an XML file -->
<xsl:param name="sheet-uri" select="'RowData.xml'"/>
<xsl:param name="sheet-doc" select="document($sheet-uri)"/>
<xsl:template match="Data">
<xsl:for-each select="Data/Number">
<xsl:variable name="continue" select="$sheet-doc//Sheet/Row[Number = current()]/Continue"/>
<xsl:if test="">
<!-- Check the Source.xml against the RowData.xml and
see if the set contains any "No"'s in it. -->
<!-- If it does then don't do the following -->
<Data2>
<Number><xsl:value-of select="Number"/></Number>
<Timestamp>125222</Timestamp>
</Data2>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
So basically, before making the <Data2> element, check the numbers in Source.xml and see if any of those numbers have a value of No for the column Continue in RowData.xml. I don't know how to make the if statement above. I know there's a contains() function in xslt; however, I don't know how I can use it here.
Is this possible? Please let me know if anything was confusing. Thanks in advance!

check the numbers in Source.xml and see if any of those numbers have a value of No for the column Continue in RowData.xml.
You can take advantage of XSLT's "existential equal" operator here:
test="doc('source.xml')/Data/Number =
$sheet-doc//Sheet/Row[Continue='No']/Number"
Essentially, if A and B are sets of values, then A = B returns true if some value in A is equal to some value in B.

I would suggest you use the key mechanism - esp. if you're using XSLT 2.0.
Define a key as:
<xsl:key name="row" match="Row" use="Number" />
then do:
<xsl:template match="/Data">
<xsl:for-each select="Number[not(key('row', ., $sheet-doc))]">
<Data2>
<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
<Timestamp>125222</Timestamp>
</Data2>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
This selects only Numberelements that do not have a corresponding Row in the RowData.xml document.

markup specific strings in Xml

I like to markup some strings in an xml document.
For example, I have:
<p> I like to go to Florida </p>
I need to tag the string "go" and have the output as:
<p> I like to <something>go</something> to Florida</p>
What is the best way to do this? I am using Java. I need to treat the XML file as XML not as text. I found some solutions that treat an xml file as a text file and use string.replace but I do not think those are good solutions.
Any suggestion is much appreciated.
Thank you,

Try an XSLT 2.0 transformation like this:
<xsl:template match="#*|*">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="text()">
<xsl:analyze-string regex="go">
<xsl:matching-substring>
<something><xsl:value-of select="."/></something>
</xsl:matching-substring>
<xsl:non-matching-substring>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:non-matching-substring>
</xsl:analyze-string>
</xsl:template>
You can of course extend the regular expression, e.g. regex="go|come|walk|run"; if you only want to match whole words, you might want to use tokenize() to split it into words and process each word separately.

Remove special characters from XML via XSLT only for specific tags

I am having a certian issue with special characters in my XML.
Bascially I am splitting up an xml into multiple xmls using Xalan Processor.
When splitting the documents up I am using their value of the name tag as the name of the file generated. The problem is that the name contains characters that arent recognized by the XML processor like ™ (TM) and ® (R). I want to remove those characters ONLY when naming the files.
<xsl:template match="products">
<redirect:write select="concat('..\\xml\\product\\en\\',translate(string(name),'</> ',''),'.xml')">
The above is the XSL code I have writter to split the XML into multlpe XMLs. As you can see I am using hte translate method to subtitute '/','<','>' with '' from the name. I was hoping I could do the same with ™ (TM) and ® (R) but it doesnt seem to work.
Please advice me how I would be able to do that.
Thanks for you help in advance.

I don't have Xalan, but with 8 other XSLT processors this thransformation:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:template match="text()">
<xsl:value-of select="translate(., '</>™®', '')"/>
===================
<xsl:value-of select="translate(., '</>™®', '')"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
when applied on this XML document:
<t>XXX™ My Trademark®</t>
produces the wanted result:
XXX My Trademark
===================
XXX My Trademark
I suggest that you try to use one of the two expressions above -- at least the second may work successfully.

Following Dimitre answer, I think that if you are not sure about wich special character could be in name, maybe you should keep what you consider legal document's name characters.
As example:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:template match="text()">
<xsl:value-of select="translate(.,
translate(.,
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ',
''),
'')"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
With input:
<t>XXX™ My > Trademark®</t>
Result:
XXX My Trademark

How to preserve Empty XML Tags after XSLT - prevent collapsing them from <B></B> to <B/>

Say I have a very simple XML with an empty tag 'B':
<Root>
<A>foo</A>
<B></B>
<C>bar</C>
</Root>
I'm currently using XSLT to remove a few tags, like 'C' for example:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="no" encoding="utf-8" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:copy-of select="#*" />
<xsl:apply-templates />
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="C" />
</xsl:stylesheet>
So far OK, but the problem is I end up having an output like this:
<Root>
<A>foo</A>
<B/>
</Root>
when I actually really want:
<Root>
<A>foo</A>
<B></B>
</Root>
Is there a way to prevent 'B' from collapsing?
Thanks.

Ok, so here what worked for me:
<xsl:output method="html">

Try this:
<script type="..." src="..."> </script>
Your HTML output will be:
<script type="..." src="..."> </script>
The   prevents the collapsing but translates to a blank space. It's worked for me in the past.

There is no standard way, as they are equivalent; You might be able to find an XSLT engine that has an option for this behaviour, but I'm not aware of any.
If you're passing this to a third party that cannot accept empty tags using this syntax, then you may have to post-process the output yourself (or convince the third party to fix their XML parsing)

It is up to the XSLT engine to decide how the XML tag is rendered, because a parser should see no difference between the two variations. However, when outputting HTML this is a common problem (for <textarea> and <script> tags for example.) The simplest (but ugly) solution is to add a single whitespace inside the tag (this does change the meaning of the tag slightly though.)

This has been a long time issue and I finally made it work with a simple solution.
Add <xsl:text/> if you have a space character. I added a space in my helper class.
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$textAreaValue=' '">
<xsl:text/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="$textAreaValue"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

They are NOT always equivalent. Many browsers can't deal with <script type="..." src="..." /> and want a separate closing tag. I ran into this problem while using xml/xsl with PHP. Output "html" didn't work, I'm still looking for a solution.

No. The 2 are syntactically identical, so you shouldn't have to worry

It should not be a problem if it is or . However if you are using another tool which expects empty XML tags as way only, then you have a problem. A not very elegant way to do this will be adding a space between staring and ending 'B' tags through XSLT code.

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">
<![CDATA[<div></div>]]>
</xsl:text>
This works fine with C#'s XslCompiledTransform class with .Net 2.0, but may very well fail almost anywhere else. Do not use unless you are programmatically doing the transofrm yourself; it is not portable at all.

It's 7 years late, but for future readers I will buck the trend here and propose an actual solution to the original question. A solution that does not modify the original with spaces or the output directive.
The idea was to use an empty variable to trick the parser.
If you only want to do it just for one tag B, my first thought was to use something like this to attach a dummy variable.
<xsl:variable name="dummyempty" select="''"/>
<xsl:template match="B">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*" />
<xsl:value-of select="concat(., $dummyempty)"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
But I found that in fact, even the dummy variable is not necessary. This preserved empty tags, at least when tested with xsltproc in linux :
<xsl:template match="B">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*" />
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
For a more generic solution to handle ALL empty tags, try this:
<xsl:variable name="dummyempty" select="''"/>
<xsl:template match="*[. = '']">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()|#*" />
<xsl:value-of select="$dummyempty"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
Again, depending on how smart your parser is, you may not even need the dummy variable.