This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.
Section 9.9 concerning the scope of variables contains no mention of packages. A reader who reads this section in isolation, without first becoming familiar with the sections of the spec concerning packages, may find the current wording misleading. Specifically, the paragraph that reads: A global variable binding element is visible everywhere in the stylesheet (including other stylesheet modules) except within the xsl:variable or xsl:param element itself and any region where it is shadowed by another variable binding. would be clearer if it read: A global variable binding element is visible everywhere in the containing package (including other stylesheet modules) except within the xsl:variable or xsl:param element itself and any region where it is shadowed by another variable binding. (For rules regarding the visibility of the variable in other packages, see 3.5.3.1.)
The WG agreed the change and it has been applied to the spec.