I suspect this is a limitation or unavoidable consequence of how XQuery update works, or at least how Saxon does things, but I wanted to check. If I have a DTD-based document, e.g., a DITA map or topic, and apply an XQuery update to it using Saxon EE, I noticed that the entire document is updated such that the DOCTYPE declaration is removed and all defaulted attributes are now explicit in the instance, which is obviously not to be desired. Is there any way to avoid this behavior? My alternative is to use XSLT of course but I was trying to use XQuery update as being more convenient for certain types of enhancements to existing documents, namely adding attributes to existing elements. Thanks, Eliot ————— Eliot Kimber, Owner Contrext, LLC http://contrext.com