[xsl] Need help with apply-templates to set variables

[Brad Cox <bcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is driving me crazy. I've been hung on this problem all 
day. Could someone please help? I'm trying to use a xalan 
extension to call one of my java functions. The extension logic 
is working and the function is being called ok. The problem is 
that it only gets the text content of each node. All xhtml 
markup is being removed.

Here's the nub the problem. See below for the full stylesheet.

<xsl:template match="page">
<xsl:variable name="body">
#parse("vel/macros.vel")
#taskOpening("@ident")
<xsl:apply-templates select="*"/>
#taskClosing("@ident")
</xsl:variable>
PageText{<xsl:value-of select="$body"/>}
<xsl:value-of select="task:addPage($task, @ident, $body)" />
</xsl:template>

When $body is received (as a String) by my addPage routine, it 
contains only text with all markup removed. For example, for 
this input

<task ident="HelloWorld">
	<page ident="LoremIpsem">
		<p>Foo</p>
	</page>
</task>

I see CopyOf{Foo} in the output when I want to be seeing 
<p>CopyOf(<p>Foo</p>)</p>.

It seems that markup is deleted only when the results are saved 
in a variable. If I add a <xsl:apply-templates select="*"/> 
outside of the variable assignment in the above, the output 
contains markup as expected.

Here is the whole stylesheet.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
	xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
	xmlns:task="edu.virtualschool.model.Task"
	extension-element-prefixes="task"
	exclude-result-prefixes="java"
>
<xsl:output method="html"/>
<xsl:param name="task">null</xsl:param>

<xsl:template match="/task">
#set($totalPages = <xsl:value-of select="count(page)"/>)
#set($pageTitles = [<xsl:for-each select="page">"<xsl:value-of 
select="@ident"/>",</xsl:for-each>"Submit page"])
<xsl:apply-templates select="page"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="page">
<xsl:variable name="body">
#parse("vel/macros.vel")
#taskOpening("@ident")
<xsl:apply-templates select="*"/>
#taskClosing("@ident")
</xsl:variable>
PageText{<xsl:value-of select="$body"/>}
<xsl:value-of select="task:addPage($task, @ident, $body)" />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template 
match="EmailQuestion|EssayQuestion|NameQuestion|UrlQuestion|PhoneQuestion"
>
#<xsl:value-of select="name()"/>("<xsl:value-of 
select="@ident"/>" "<xsl:value-of select="normalize-
space(text())"/>")
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="MenuQuestion|RadioQuestion|CheckboxQuestion">
#<xsl:value-of select="name()"/>("<xsl:value-of 
select="@ident"/>" "<xsl:value-of select="normalize-
space(text())"/>" [<xsl:for-each select="option">"<xsl:value-of 
select="."/>"<xsl:if test="not(position() = 
last())">,</xsl:if></xsl:for-each>])
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*">
<p>CopyOf{<xsl:copy-of select="."/>}</p>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>


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