> For the benefit of the editor,
Why be kind to editors? but anyway...

> in doc.xml, it fails because of the contained
> doctype declaration in the files sectn.xml

One possibility is to make the source files of each section _not_
have a doctpe then have each sect1.xml just consist of the DOCTYPE
and an entity reference to the file containing the body of the section.
The doc.xml similarly can refer to the three files with the section
bodies, not the sectn.xml files.


> Fine.... except I want to use <xsl:number
> to have consistant numbering across the suite
> of documents (Implies I need all 3 sections
> visible / part of the same source tree????)

If making the entire document visible to the XSL processor just to
get the numbers right is too large a price to pay you could make the
starting section number (and any other context information)
a parameter of the stylesheet so you could go

xt style.xsl section3.xml section="3"

or even just 

xt style.xsl  section="3"

and let the stylesheet work out that it needs to include section3.xml
via document() , except that currently at least I think you have to give
xt some top level file to get started on.

David


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