29424 2016-02-07 01:51:14 +0000 [XSLT30] Contradiction in the sentence on item-separator 2016-02-18 20:41:56 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified XPath / XQuery / XSLT XSLT 3.0 Candidate Recommendation PC Windows NT CLOSED WORKSFORME P2 normal --- 1 abel.braaksma mike public-qt-comments oldest_to_newest 124880 0 abel.braaksma 2016-02-07 01:51:14 +0000 Under section 26 Serialization, the item on "item-separator" says the following: <quote> To set the parameter to absent, the item-separator attribute can either be omitted, or set to the special value item-separator="#absent"; it is not possible to set the value of the serialization parameter to the literal 7-character string "#absent" </quote> The last part of the sentence (after the ";") contradicts the previous part. We say it can be set to "#absent" and then we say it cannot be set to that value. Which is it? ;) I'd assume "#absent" is a valid value. I noticed also that the syntax for xsl:output and xsl:result-document do not mention the "#absent", I think it makes sense to add it there: item-separator? = "#absent" | string 124881 1 abel.braaksma 2016-02-07 02:04:43 +0000 Thinking once more about it, perhaps the sentence could be slightly rewritten, something along those lines? <proposal> The value of the item-separator attribute provides the value of the item-separator parameter to the serialization method. The value of the serialization parameter can be any string (including a zero-length string), or absent. The default is the zero-length string. The special token "#absent" can be used as an alternative to signify that the attribute was omitted and the default zero-length string should be used. It is not possible to use the string "#absent" itself as an item separator as it is reserved as described above. </proposal> 124886 2 mike 2016-02-07 13:23:25 +0000 You can set the item-separator *attribute* to the value "#absent"; this sets the item-separator *serialization parameter* to (let's call it) null, not to the string "#absent". To understand this paragraph you need to know that attributes and serialization parameters are not the same thing. 125035 3 mike 2016-02-15 11:27:45 +0000 Resolved that no action was needed.