RE: output to iso-8859-1 of non-iso characters, what i

> But if I am outputting a text document with iso-8859-1 then 
> the presence of non-iso characters in the output will raise an error.

The spec says "should" rather than "will". XSLT 2.0 is stricter, it says
"must".

If you're asking what the spec says, that's the answer. If you're asking why
it says that, that's a different question. It's very hard to answer
questions about why a WG made a particular decision even if you were at all
the relevant meetings - which I wasn't. What one can do is try to invent a
rationale that the WG might use to justify the decision if asked. But
clearly in this case different users are likely to have different
expectations and requirements, so it's a subjective decision.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/