XSLT and XPath Conformance Notes

The MSXML Parser implementation is based on the XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0 W3C Recommendation 16 November 1999, found at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xslt-19991116 and the XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0 W3C Recommendation 16 November 1999, found at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xpath-19991116.

The XML Parser contains an implementation of a subset of the XSLT and XPath specifications. Because of the time necessary to develop the parser, it was impossible to implement all specifications for this release. Microsoft is, however, committed to full compliance and will deliver the remaining features in a future release.

In error cases where the XSLT recommendation provides a fallback behavior (for example, two matching templates with the same priority), MSXML performs the fallback behavior.

MSXML provides two mechanisms for implementing extension functions, embedded script implementations (<msxsl:script>) and external objects (addObject). MSXML does not provide a mechanism for implementing extension elements.

The <xsl:output> element supports only the xml method.

Unimplemented features and known conformance bugs are listed below.

Unimplemented Features

There are a number of features that are not implemented in this release. Partial workarounds are noted where they exist.

XSLT Features

• Recognition of future namespaces (section 2.5)
• <xsl:import> element (section 2.6.2); <xsl:include> element is supported
• <xsl:strip-space> and <xsl:preserve-space> elements (section 3.4)
• <xsl:apply-imports> element (section 5.6)
• Named templates, <xsl:call-template> element (section 6)
• <xsl:namespace-alias> element (section 7.1.1)
• Named attribute sets (section 7.1.4)
• <xsl:number> element (section 7.7)
• case-order and lang attributes (section 10)
• <xsl:key> element (section 12.2)
• <xsl:message> element (section 13)
• <xsl:fallback> element (section 15)

XPath Features

• Axes (section 2.2)
  • following
  • following-sibling
  • preceding
  • preceding-sibling
  • namespace
• Boolean Functions (section 4.3)
  • lang()
• Number Functions (section 4.4)
  • sum()
  • floor()
  • ceiling()
  • round()
• XSLT Additional Functions (XSLT, section 12)
  • document()
  • key()
  • unparsed-entity-uri()
  • generate-id()