To get back to the original question, regarding whether the
following is legal in Xalan

<xsl:sort select="*[local-name()=string($sortby)]"
order="{$orderby}" />

Xalan requires the order attribute value to be a literal
string. It's a know feature; I've heard that there are no
plans to change it to conform to the W3C spec. If you're
going to use Xalan, you'll probably have to utilize David
C's <xsl:choose> solution.

	To provide an incomplete answer to the follow-up question,
regarding whether the following is legal in Xalan

<xsl:sort select="*[local-name()=string($sortby)]" />

I've heard that Xalan has some scoping issues that make it
unable to resolve variables within a <xsl:sort> that have
been declared outside of the enclosing <xsl:for-each>
or<xsl:apply-templates>. I don't know how you'd get around
it. You might want to take it up on an apache mailing list
<http://xml.apache.org/mail.html> . . . nevermind, I see
that you already have.

	Justin


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