Help! I'm ripping my heair out on this one. Please explain
why the effect of with-param in apply-templates select='expr'
depends on whether expr is an xpath selector on the current
document or a synthesized node-set.

<xsl:stylesheet
  version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common"
  exclude-result-prefixes="exsl">
<!-- For MSXSL use this instead
  xmlns:exsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
-->

<xsl:template match="ROOT">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select='child::node()[1]'/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="BAR">
  <xsl:param name='P'/>
  <BAR P='{$P}'/>
</xsl:template>

Now I show you two variants of templates to deal with the FOO
element. The first one uses the xpath selector:

<xsl:template match="FOO">
  <FOO/>
  <xsl:apply-templates select='following-sibling::node()[1]'>
    <xsl:with-param name='P' select="'V'"/>
  </xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:template>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<ROOT>
   <FOO/>
   <BAR P="V"/>
</ROOT>

<xsl:template match="FOO">
  <FOO/>
  <xsl:variable name='SYNTH'>
    <BAR/>
  </xsl:variable>
  <xsl:apply-templates select='exsl:node-set($SYNTH)'>
    <xsl:with-param name='P' select="'V'"/>
  </xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:template>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<ROOT>
   <FOO/>
   <BAR P=""/>
</ROOT>

as you see, here the parameter P <= V was not carried into the
applied templates. Why is that?

I tried with both saxon and msxml and they both do the same
thing.

Whatever it is, it is very obscure and makes my life very
difficult.

Of course you don't see the use case from this dummed down
example. My use case is string parsing for 'up-translation'
where I match a head of a string then clip off the head
and apply the templates on the rest of the text node. I
cannot pass any parameters through this kind of process,
ouch!

regards
-Gunther

PS: workaround seems to be to wrap the rest of the
text node in an element with parameters as attributes
or something. Argh!

--
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D.                    gschadow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Medical Information Scientist      Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor        Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960                         http://aurora.regenstrief.org