> Anyway 
> whatever "@" is, an "entity" or a "reference" or anything 
> else, it 
> *should* be possible to generate it so the impossibility or 
> difficulty in 
> doing it should be considered something of a "bug" of xslt. I 
> can live with 
> that :-) but it's a pity anyway.

Would you consider it a "bug" that you can't control whether spaces are
output around the equals sign in an attribute (option = "selected")? 

XSLT is primarily a language for transforming trees. It also gives you some
control over serialization. But the general philosophy is that if two
serializations are equivalent, that is, if any self respecting XML/HTML
parser would treat them as equivalent, then it doesn't give you the choice.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/