> On 20 Jun 2021, at 18:35, Jeremy Cronk jcronk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Forgive my ignorance on this, but why is there a global context item in the
first place?  Ibve never seen it do anything but cause trouble, but on the
other hand, Ibve never seen it actually being used except by global
variables.
>

I guess you have to go back to the design thinking for XSLT 1.0 here. 1.0 was
designed largely on the principle of "no run-time errors", and part of this
was that there was always a context item defined. Future versions, of course,
had to retain compatibility.

Michael Kay
Saxonica