> I suspect there isn't enough people concerned about this to 
> get this issue into the working group's todo list (sigh).

It only needs one person to get it onto the agenda: make an entry in
Bugzilla at 

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/query.cgi

choosing product "XPath / XQuery / XSLT" and component "XSLT 2.1".

Whether it gets any further depends on you making a good case, and on other
people agreeing with it.

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay