Re: How do I build a nodeset "programmatically" for p

>  Assuming what I want to do is possible in XSL 1.1,

Note that there will never be an XSL 1.1, there was an early draft of it
(and an implementation of that draft in saxon 6) but the draft was
withdrawn and they decided to go "straight" to version 2 which might
hopefully be finalised this year.

in xsl 1.1 draft (and xsl2 draft which is implemented in saxon 8) then
you can do just as you suggest

<xsl:variable name="something">
 ... xsl code ..
</xsl:variable>

then 
select="$something/*"

(note that $something is always a root node / soto select the top level
element (or elements) that you create in the variable you need to
use a path such as $something/*

There are some differences in the way that this works in xsl2 and in the
xsl 1.1 draft so you would be best to switch to xslt2 (or use xsl 1.0
and the node-set extension which is supported in most xsl 1 processors)
rather relying on xsl 1.1

David