What does 'reverse document order' mean?

I've been working on a style sheet for rendering CALS-style tables as
HTML, and hit a problem with the preceding-sibling:: axis.  My
assumption was that, since preceding-sibling:: selects siblings in
'reverse document order', the first node in the set would be the one
immediately preceding the current node.

However, as this little test document shows (I think!), the opposite is
true - the node set orders the preceding siblings in forward, not
reverse, order.  The same appears to be true of the preceding:: axis.

I've tested this with both MSXSL and Instant Saxon - the results are the
same.

Am I guilty of muddled thinking, or inadequate study of the spec?  Or is
there some subtlety that I am missing?

Richard Light.

[ Section: 1/1 File: siblings.xml UUencoded by: Turnpike Version 4.01  ]

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`
end

sum -r/size 62556/303 section (from "begin" to "end")
sum -r/size 13081/197 entire input file
[ Section: 1/1 File: siblings.xsl UUencoded by: Turnpike Version 4.01  ]

begin 644 siblings.xsl
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`
end

sum -r/size 15337/981 section (from "begin" to "end")
sum -r/size 35864/690 entire input file


Richard Light
SGML/XML and Museum Information Consultancy
richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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