> But at the same time, "link" is no longer an element and that isnt
> quite natural either.  If this stylesheet was ever passed thru another
> stylesheet, the link element could not be accessed via XPath.
> 

"link" never was an element and never will be. XML doesn't allow elements
inside comments. It's a string of characters that looks like an element to
the untrained observer - but not to an XML parser or XPath processor. 

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