Re: [xsl] stylesheet organisation

[Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 03/09/2011 09:17, Jesper Tverskov wrote:
> Mark asked:
>
> "Is there a significant difference between xsl:import and xsl:include
> worth learning?"
>
> The only difference between xsl:import and xsl:include is that
> xsl:import must be the very first child of xsl:stylesheet.
>
> This means that if the importing stylesheet has templates that matches
> with same priority as the templates in the imported stylesheet, the
> templates in the importing stylesheet are sure to win out because they
> are after the templates in the imported stylesheet.
>
> That is you never really need to use xsl:import. If you make sure that
> an xsl:include is the very first child of xsl:stylesheet, it works
> exactly as if xsl:import had been used.
Wrong!

As far as template rules are concerned, it's an error to have two 
templates matching the same node, but processors are allowed to recover 
from the error by choosing the one that comes last in declaration order. 
For a processor that chooses the recovery strategy, xsl:import has the 
same effect as xsl:include. For a processor that doesn't, the effect is 
quite different.

But for many other declarations in a stylesheet, like global variables, 
named templates, and stylesheet functions, having two with the same name 
at the same precedence is a hard error. You can use xsl:import to 
override these definitions, you can't use xsl:include.

Michael Kay
Saxonica