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Re: [xsl] Is it OK for xsl:output to affect the construction of an unserialized result tree?

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I would find this sort of behaviour non-intuitive. Using the JAXP API the attributes in the xsl:output element show up in the output properties of the transformer. In fact I have been able to reformat an XML document using a null transform and setting the property:

StreamResult result = new StreamResult( new FileWriter(projectBase + fileName) );
TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty( "indent", "yes" );
transformer.transform( source, result );

I would guess that the serialization stage is interpreting the output properties. I am using Saxon so Michael Kay could confirm that this is true but I would be surprised (and a bit miffed) if it inserted text nodes into the result if "result" were a DOM. I don't know if there is a suitable place to put the output instructions in a DOM - they may just go away in that case.

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

We should note that the general issue of whether the xsl:output can affect the construction of the result tree goes beyond the specific case cited here. For instance, if it is OK for xsl:output to do this, then one might imagine that <xsl:output indent="yes"/> could lead to the insertion of additional text nodes in the result tree, though to my knowledge no XSLT processor yet does that.

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