> Below is a snippet of xsl that I am trying to get to work. 
> Firstly I am not sure if the stylesheet header is legal, and secondly even
if it is
> strickly legal will it work for what I want to do?

It's legal but useless. A processor that recognizes the xsl namespace (and
therefore the template) will treat xslt:variable as a literal result
element, while one that recognises the xslt namespace will treat a top-level
xsl:template element and its contents as user data to be ignored.

Mike Kay
> 
> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl"
>                 xmlns:xslt="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
>                 version="1.0"
>                 xmlns:data="any-uri" >
> 
> [Other Templates Deleted......]
> 
> <xsl:template match="ENTRY">
>         <xslt:variable name="spancols">2</xslt:variable>
>         <TD>
>         XX
>         <xslt:copy-of select="$spancols"/>
>         XX
>         <xsl:apply-templates />
>         </TD>
> </xsl:template>
> 
> </xsl:stylesheet>  
> 


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