RE: xmlns="" ??

> 
> > By the way there's no real need to do:
> >
> > <xsl:element name="table">
> >
> > you can just as easily do
> >
> > <table>
> 
> Side tracking a bit, is there any differences in the above 
> two? 

The difference is that the literal result element <table> copies all the
namespaces declared in the stylesheet, <xsl:element> doesn't.

> Would the later be more optimised, as the XSLT processor does 
> not need to parse it and then convert it?

You can only ask a question like that in relation to a specific XSLT
implementation. In principle with an LRE more of the decisions can be made
at compile time. However, it's quite tricky for an implementation to avoid
the cost with an LRE of generating all the namespaces and then eliminating
them because they are duplicates. The only way to find out is to measure it.

Michael Kay