RE: The output of evaluating an XSLT transform is the

> There is no way in XSLT 1.0 of telling what the actual order 
> of evaluation is, and therefore a statement in the spec that 
> suggests a particular order has no force. Processors are 
> conformant if they produce the right results in all 
> circumstances, whether or not they do things the way the spec 
> suggests they should be done.
> 

Incidentally, XSLT 1.0 says this explicitly in section 5.1:

Implementations are free to process the source document in any way that
produces the same result as if it were processed using this processing
model.

Regards,

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