Re: Root node vs element root?

> I know the element root is <book>,

The top level element (sometimes called the document element)
does not have any special signifacnce in XPath.
An XPath root note is the root of the tree, essentially it corresponds
to the entire document.
so

> but is the root node <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> ??? 

No, there is no node corresponding to the xml declaration
(but there would be nodes corresponding to Pi's such as for example
<?xml-stylesheet ..?> which may also occur before the start of the first
element. 


> Also, does the XSLT processor even see/read the xml declaration?

No, although of course it will be read by the XML parser used by your
XSL system, and used to control (at least) the encoding used while
reading the document.

David

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