> If I put your example into a xml document, say
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <doc>
> &lt;myXmlElementName&gt;myXmlElementText&lt;/myXmlElementName&gt;
> </doc>
> 
> then its perfectly valid and the  &lt and &gt get
> resolved by the parser. For the xls stylesheet its
> identical to:
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <doc>
> <myXmlElementName>myXmlElementText</myXmlElementName>
> </doc>

No, it's not identical. The first document contains one element node, the
second contains two.

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