> So this for-each applied to my $maindoc actually places a node into the
> variable? Yuck.

Not the for-each, its the variable construct itself.
If you use xsl:variable with content then it generates a result-tree
fragment consisting of a root node with content whatever you construct.
If you xx:node-set() that result tree frag to a node set then it
contains a single / node.

Usually you want to apply-templates select="node()" to start at the 
children of the root.

David

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