Strip special characters in span - html

Question

I have a node like this in an XML file that I transform with XSLT 2.0:
<h2><span class='sun'>☼☼</span> my text (G1.2)</h2>
which includes some HTML special characters, as you see.
Now I need to generate XHTML like this:
my text
So I have to strip out the span and the stuff between () and use the rest to generate the h2 header.
To strip the (), I have this:
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(replace( . ,'\([^\)]*\)' ,''))"/>
which works OK. But to strip the span, I cannot use
<xsl:template match="span[#class='sun']"/>
Because I do not apply templates after the xsl:value-of anymore. So the span-template is never applied.
Can I strip the span in the same line? If not, how can I strip the span also?
Or can I replace the special characters in the same replace function somehow? Then I would be left with an empty span element, but that's not a problem.

Answer 1

You can match the child::text() contents of <h1> separately from the child::span elements. This should work:
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
<xsl:template match="span[#class='sun']"/>
<xsl:template match="h2/text()">
<a href="">
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(replace( . ,'\([^\)]*\)' ,''))"/>
</a>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 2

Here is the template thus far. It (toct) generates a table of contents from a HTML h1/h2/h3 structure recursively.
It is applied like this:
<xsl:call-template name="toct">
<xsl:with-param name="nodes" select="document(file)//(h1|h2|h3)"/>
<xsl:with-param name="file" select="replace (file,'xml', 'xhtml')"/>
</xsl:call-template>
<xsl:template name="toct">
<xsl:param name="nodes"/>
<xsl:param name="file"/>
<xsl:if test="count($nodes) > 0">
<xsl:for-each-group select="$nodes" group-starting-with="*[local-name() = name($nodes[1])]">
<li>
<!-- do not include empty header tags in the TOC -->
<a>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="text()">
<xsl:if test="name($nodes[1])='h1'">
<xsl:attribute name="id"><xsl:value-of select="$nodes[1]/#id"/></xsl:attribute>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:attribute name="href"><xsl:value-of select="$file"/>#<xsl:value-of select="#id"/></xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(replace(replace( string-join(node(),'') , '[☼*]' ,'') ,'\([^\)]*\)' ,''))"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:attribute name="class">invisible</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:text>-</xsl:text>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</a>
<xsl:if test="current-group()[2]">
<ol>
<xsl:call-template name="toct">
<!-- strip the first node in the list. This is why you can use $nodes[1] to find out
which level of <h_> tags you are at -->
<xsl:with-param name="nodes" select="current-group() except ."/>
<xsl:with-param name="file" select="$file"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</ol>
</xsl:if>
</li>
</xsl:for-each-group>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>