document() missing the document

I'm trying to copy a node set from an external document, using
<xsl:copy-of select="document('zorro.xml')/......"/>. This is part of a
transformation that is being kicked off via the selectSingleNode /
transformNode() javascript interface in IE. Works great, provided
zorro.xml actually exists.

If zorro.xml doesn't exist, or the server is down, IE6 produces a
Javascript exception and the transformation fails.

Is there a way to write the XSLT stylesheet so that zorro.xml is
optional? In other words, for the transformation to succeed even if
document() fails?

I seems to me the XSLT standard says that document() can return an empty
node set if the file doesn't exist, or produce an error
(implementation-specific), and it seems MSXML implements the latter
whilst I need the former.

Any clues?
TIA
Bernd

-- 
Bernd  Gauweiler
mailto:bernd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-- 


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