RE: submitting rtf contained within param

[David_Marston at lotus dot com]

Matthew Bentley wants to do
<xsl:apply-templates select="$gentext" />
where $gentext is a result tree fragment (RTF). He notes that
Saxon complains, as would Xalan, but MSXML accepts it.

Then Joshua Allen (joshuaa@microsoft.com) says:
>MSXML treats everything as a node-set, thus no extension function.
>Most other processors have a node-set extension function (which is
>how Saxon does things).  My vote is "spec vagueries",...

My vote is that the spec is clear enough, if just barely.

First, note the syntax in Section 5.4
<xsl:apply-templates select= node-set-expression ...
Now, look at Section 11.1, which defines RTFs. It talks about
binding a variable to an RTF "instead of" a node-set, and goes on
to use verbiage that consistently avoids portraying RTFs as a
subclass of node-sets.

As for automatic conversion, 11.1 also says "An operation is
permitted on a result tree fragment only if that operation would
be permitted on a string..." and XPath 3.3 says that no objects
can be converted to node-sets. That xsl:apply-templates
instruction takes a node-set, not a string.

Taken together, these provisions eliminate all the claimed
vagueness in the specs.
.................David Marston


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