I would guess that the stylesheet was run on a document where <id>
wasn't a first child, that would generate the error quoted.

To fix that you want to change
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>

to

    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="*[name()=$elnames]"/>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()[not(name()=$elnames)]"/>
    </xsl:copy>


So that the elements that are going to become attributes get processed
first.

David

-- 
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