Re: sequence of strings

I would tend to write that as

<xsl:function name="get-attributes" as="xs:string*">
  <xsl:param name="string" as="xs:string"/>
  <xsl:sequence select="'BLD'[contains($string, 'bold')],
'ITA'[contains($string, 'italic')]"/>
</xsl:function>

or if it were a longer list of names then

<xsl:variable name="styles" as="element(style)">
  <style name="BLD" code="bold"/>
  <style name="ITA" code="italic"/>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:function name="get-attributes" as="xs:string*">
<xsl:param name="string" as="xs:string"/>
<xsl:sequence select="$styles[contains($string, @code)]/@name"/>
</xsl:function>