RE: [xsl] why: first mode, then matching the node, then import precedence, then priority?

["Michael Kay" <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Why is there such a weird rule for selecting the right 
> template? I would intuitively think, 

Circular question: the rule seems weird to you because you haven't grasped
why it's there.

The idea is that given a standard set of stylesheets (like docbook, say),
you can write an overlay or customization layer that overrides selected
rules to get different behaviour. Priority determines the relative strength
of rules within a customization layer, but rules in a customization layer
always take precedence over rules in the base layer.

I suppose it could have been defined differently, with a single-level
priority ranking, allowing a customization layer to insert rules anywhere
into the ordering rather than only over the top. That would allow you to do
anything you can do now, and more - but it's not clear that it would meet
any real requirement, and it could make things a lot harder to debug.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/