> Within XSLT and XPATH, what, if any, purpose does this 
> seperation of root node and document element serve?
> We know it confuses. 

The separation of concepts is essential, because the root node can have
other children besides the document element, e.g. comments and processing
instructions; in fact in a result tree fragment it can also have text nodes
and multiple element children. The unnecessary confusion is the inconsistent
terminology between the DOM, XML, and XPath specs.

Mike Kay


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