[xsl] XML/XHTML fragment to text

[Alain <alainb06@xxxxxxx>]

I have to give a legacy application (non-XML/XHTML aware) a fragment of 
XHTML.
That is done trough converting the fragment to text and storing it in a 
text file. The legacy application reads the file, considers it's just a 
bunch of bytes and hands it back as is to a web application when required.

XSL is awsome when you work with XML in and out, but trying to output 
text... it's doesn't look so easy and natural !

So the problem is : converting an XHTML (in fact any XML) fragment to text.

We run Xalan-C 1.10 (then obviously XSLT1.0)

That's what I did :

XML fragment :

<fragment>
 <div>Any XML/XHTML <span style="color:black">elements with attributes 
also</span> or empty tags <br/> and  empty tags with attributes <hr 
style="color:white"/></div>
</fragment>


XSL templates :

   <xsl:output method="text" encoding="utf-8" 
omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no"/>

   <xsl:template match="/">

      <!-- Some code here to output other pieces of text -->

      <!-- Here we Call the XML to Text Templates on our fragment -->
       <xsl:variable name="xhtml"><xsl:apply-templates 
select="fragment"/></xsl:variable>
      
      <!-- And we output the text -->
       <xsl:value-of select="$xhtml"/>
   </xsl:template>


   <!-- XML to text templates -->
   <xsl:template match="fragment//element()">
       <xsl:choose>
       <!-- for not empty elements -->
           <xsl:when test="*|text()">
               <xsl:text>&lt;</xsl:text>
               <xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
               <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/>
               <xsl:text>&gt;</xsl:text>
               <xsl:apply-templates select="*|text()"/>
               <xsl:text>&lt;/</xsl:text>
               <xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
               <xsl:text>&gt;</xsl:text>
           </xsl:when>
       <!-- for empty elements -->
           <xsl:otherwise>
               <xsl:text>&lt;</xsl:text>
               <xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
               <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/>
               <xsl:text>/&gt;</xsl:text>
           </xsl:otherwise>
       </xsl:choose>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="fragment//text()">
       <xsl:value-of select="."/>
   </xsl:template>

   <xsl:template match="fragment//@*">
       <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
       <xsl:value-of select="name(.)"/>
       <xsl:text>="</xsl:text>
       <xsl:value-of select="."/>
       <xsl:text>"</xsl:text>
   </xsl:template>

   <!-- We do not have a template for comments or P.I., we drop them -->


All this works fine but it's quite a hedache and will be a pain for 
maintenance.
So my question is : do you think there is a simpler way of fulfilling 
the same function (even if it means moving to XSLT2.0... I would then 
have to push my enterprise to Saxon which I prefer) ?