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I'm not sure that "stringify" is a word, and perhaps more importantly, the behaviour of on-no-match? = "stringify" is not to generate a string but rather to copy text nodes. The difference between strings and text nodes doesn't usually matter, but when it does matter, it confuses people, so not using a syntax based on the word "string" would be good I think. It's easier to criticise the current name than to suggest a new one. copy-text perhaps.
textualize? Or perhaps just "text"? (we wanted a verb, and I suppose "text" is a verb these days...) We've toyed with various ideas. I think we left "stringify" in as bait to attract comments.
I like David's suggestion of "copy-text". It avoids the misleading implication that elements are "stringified." I had to read the description before realizing that it's just the normal default behavior. It also distinguishes itself nicely from "copy" (which applies to elements too). Similarly, "discard-text" seems more appropriate, to avoid the implication that elements are discarded. Again, I found "discard" by itself misleading. Yes, the distinction applies to attributes too (and simple values), but those are never processed implicitly, so it seems less important to make them explicit in the name.
The minutes of the Prague F2F (March 2011) say: Note: discussed ad nauseam. MoZ has action item to write up alternative solutions for us to examine and select from. We reviewed MoZ's email of 2 September 2010. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-xsl-wg/2010Sep/0003.html (member-only) We amended the proposal by replacing recursive-copy and recursive-skip by shallow-copy and shallow-skip, respectively. RESOLVED: approve proposal as amended. The resolution is thus: 1. deep-copy 2. shallow-copy (ex "copy") 3. text-only-copy (ex "stringify") 4. shallow-skip (ex "discard") 5. deep-skip 6. fail (no change) The draft has now been updated to reflect this resolution. David, if you are satisfied with this resolution could you please close the bug.
thanks, closing