for example...in XSLT 2.0 (SAXON 8.4)

ex. XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<example>
    <test>a</test>
</example>

ex. XSLT
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="2.0">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" use-character-maps="test"/>
    <xsl:template match="example">
        <xsl:value-of select="test"/>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:character-map name="test">
        <xsl:output-character character="a" string="&lt;test&gt;"/>
    </xsl:character-map>
</xsl:stylesheet>

results in

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><test>

using the following stylesheet as an analogy;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="2.0">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />
    <xsl:template match="example">
        &lt;test&gt;
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

results in

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

        &lt;test&gt;

which is of course well formed.

cant really tell from the spec if xsl:output method guarentee's well
formedness or perhaps xsl:character-map needs something more ?

--Jim Fuller