As regards the XT output for xsl:message, note that the XSLT spec only
tells you what the final result tree should be: it doesn't say anything
about how templates are to be instantiated in order to achieve that
result tree.  This means that the spec gives you few guarantees about
when you will see messages from xsl:message.   XT takes advantage of the
latitude afforded by the spec, and evaluates result tree fragments
lazily (when a variable is bound to a result tree fragment it doesn't
actually create the result tree fragment, it merely remembers the
information that it needs to create the tree; when you use xsl:copy-of
on the variable, XT then uses that information to output the result tree
fragment, without ever creating a tree in memory). I don't recommend
using xsl:message with XT for tracing result tree fragments: you'll just
get confused.  I don't believe XT's behaviour is non-conformant.

James


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