>Does this imply XLink support is at least being considered?

Yeah, it's safe to say that.  It's also safe to say that nobody I know
here thinks it would be a good idea to invent our own XPointer.  I
suppose it's mainly an issue right now of customer demand vs.
constrained resources.  Just getting XSD tied into everything correctly
is a lot of work at the moment (and could have an impact on how XPointer
needs to be implemented)

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list