I rewrote my stylesheet so it transforms instead of copies. Is this
something like what you meant?

Peter

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
     <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
     <xsl:template match="root">
         <xsl:element name="section" namespace="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook">
             <xsl:attribute name="version">5.0</xsl:attribute>
             <xsl:attribute name="xml:id">myIdentifier</xsl:attribute>
             <xsl:apply-templates />
         </xsl:element>
     </xsl:template>
     <xsl:template match="*">
         <xsl:variable name="elementName">
             <xsl:value-of select="name()" />
         </xsl:variable>
         <xsl:element name="{$elementName}"
namespace="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook">
             <xsl:for-each select="@*">
                 <xsl:copy-of select="." />
             </xsl:for-each>
             <xsl:apply-templates />
         </xsl:element>
     </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

    <xsl:template match="*">
        <xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
            <xsl:copy-of select="@*" />
            <xsl:apply-templates />
        </xsl:element>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="root">
      <section version="5.0" xml:id="myIdentifier">
            <xsl:apply-templates />
      </section>
    </xsl:template>

	Martin Honnen
	http://msmvps.com/blogs/martin_honnen/