The default collation used for the eq operator is implementation-defined in
XQuery, but in XSLT it is prescribed to be Unicode codepoint collation. At
any rate, I thought it was - rereading, I'm not sure I can find that
explicitly stated. But if I'm right, then an XSLT processor is not licensed
to perform Unicode normalization before comparing two strings unless a
different default collation has been chosen. In Saxon you can select a
normalizing collation using

<xsl:stylesheet ...
  default-collation="http://saxon.sf.net/collation?decomposition=standard"

If you do this, the comparison you cite returns true.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vyacheslav Sedov [mailto:vyacheslav.sedov@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 17 November 2008 12:49
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Is normalization is optional?
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I note that Marklogic perform XML normalization (see
> http://unicode.org/faq/normalization.html) so i expect that 
> it is common practice.
> 
> Just note that XQuery '&#x3008;&#x3009;' eq 
> '&#x2329;&#x232A;' is false for Saxon but true for Marklogic.
> 
> With best wishes,
> Slav