[no subject]

Here's my current understanding of inspection and absorption. Please let me
know if it is not correct or not clear.

Inspection

	Inspection: operations that can be performed
	while positioned at each item's start tag. Each
	item can be treated as opaque. There is no need
	to peek inside each item.

	These are inspection operations: count(), exists(),
	name().

	Consider a sequence of items. The function count()
	can count each item in the sequence, without peeking
	inside each item.

	Inspection operations are those that require only a
	surface understanding of the items: we merely skim
	the items.

Absorption

	Absorption: operations that require going inside each
	item.

	These are absorption operations: string(), data(),
	xsl:value-of.

	Consider a sequence of items. The function string()
	requires going inside each item in the sequence to
	collect and concatenate all the values.

	Absorption operations are those that require a deep
	understanding of the items: we must absorb all the
	information in the items.