Result Tree Fragments

Hello All,

I have been using Saxon 5.5.1 to help me understand the XSLT spec, but I've
come to a point where I can't reconcile Saxon's behaviour with the way I
read the spec. Section 11.1 of the spec describes Result Tree Fragments, and
in particular, describes how operations permitted on them are a subset of
those allowed on node-sets.

Please consider this XSL stylesheet (which can be applied to any xml
document):

------------------------------------------------------------

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'
version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="text"/>

<xsl:variable name="a">
  <NAME>
    <FIRST>Dave</FIRST>
    <LAST>Hartnoll</LAST>
  </NAME>
  <ADDRESS>
    <TOWN>Swindon</TOWN>
    <POSTCODE>SN1 4BA</POSTCODE>
  </ADDRESS>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:template match="/">
  Count   : <xsl:value-of select="count($a)"/>
  Elements: <xsl:value-of select="count($a//*)"/>
  All text: <xsl:value-of select="$a[1]"/>
  Town    : <xsl:value-of select="$a/ADDRESS/TOWN"/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

------------------------------------------------------------

I believe that the spec invalidates all of the xsl:value-of operations,
although Saxon does give the "right" answers if they were allowed.

I tried a similar stylesheet with MSXML3 in IE5 and it complained on the
first value-of that variable a was not a node-set.

So, my question, is this:
   a) A bug in Saxon
   b) A deliberate extension to Saxon
   c) My misunderstanding of the spec

Many thanks,
Dave Hartnoll.



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