Re: Commenting selected elements (parents) and keeping

<xsl:template match="ignore:*">

I think I didn't get you. Could you be more specific? What about
trying disable-output-escaping to get this done.

Well, maybe I didn't get you either. I was just wondering what the
underlying requirement was. To me, it sounded as if you were looking for
a way to make some elements disappear while at the same time retaining
them. In programing, that's often done via commenting out. So you asked
the list how to comment out those element, and you got a good answer.

I need to restore these elements as comments (I thought that will be
best way) as I need to re-transform back to the original.

I probably got you wrong here. I was just thinking that an alternative
way to make some elements disappear while at the same time retaining
them (in order to be able to restore them later) might be to move them
to another namespace, which I prefixed with "ignore". This presupposes,
however, that whoever, or whatever, deals with your data knows how to
ignore the elements in the "ignore" namespace. Assuming that it'll be
XSLT that deals with your data, I suggested a way to ignore these
elements in XSLT (by passing through).

And this assumption of mine may be wrong. Perhaps you just want elements
commented out, and the problem is solved thanks to Michael Kay's answer.