Hi, I noticed there is a good web demo of how to customize a docbook stylesheet. http://www.oxygenxml.com/demo/DocbookCustomization/docbookCustomization.html Basically you create a customization layer which imports the standard docbook stylesheet. Then you edit that customization layer. I noticed something strange. Oxygen validates the imported stylesheet when XSLT version is 1.0, but if you change it to 2.0, I get 19 errors. ********************** this is fine <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <xsl:import href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/docbook.xsl"/> </xsl:stylesheet> ****************** this produces saxon errors <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" exclude-result-prefixes="xs" version="2.0"> <xsl:import href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/docbook.xsl"/> </xsl:stylesheet> *********************************** here's a screenshot of the error messages http://www.flickr.com/photos/rjnagle/3664940578/ What it looks like is going on is that Oxygen is recognizing that the XSL being imported is from docbook and therefore it uses a local copy of the file. And it's seeing a mismatch between the latest version online with the local xsl it is references. So I changed it to this and got a smaller number of errors: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" exclude-result-prefixes="xs" version="2.0"> <xsl:import href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/1.75.1/epub/docbook.xsl"/> </xsl:stylesheet> -- SystemID: I:\My Documents\xml\rj2\test99ertest\2rjcustom.xsl Engine name: Saxon-B 9.1.0.6 Severity: error Description: Failed to compile stylesheet. 1 error detected. SystemID: http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/1.75.1/epub/docbook.xsl Engine name: Saxon-B 9.1.0.6 Severity: fatal Description: The priority attribute must be absent if the match attribute is absent Start location: 1308:30 URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#err-XTSE0500 SystemID: http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/1.75.1/common/stripns.xsl Engine name: Saxon-B 9.1.0.6 Severity: warning Description: The attribute axis starting at a document node will never select anything Start location: 282:0 I have some meta questions with regard to the general process of debugging here. 1. I assume that xslt v2 is better because it's a bigger number (and I've glanced over the differences in syntax, etc). Can you think of a reason why something would fail when version 2 is specified which would not be the case if version 1 is specified? Is best practice just to play it safe and go with version 1, or should I generally use 2 unless otherwise specified? 2. I'm guessing that it's easier to debug a local copy of a xsl file than a remote one (in this case version 1.7.5.1 of the epub-xsl transform. which is different from the local version (which is 1.7.4 that came with 10.2). Is there a way that Oxygen knows to associate the URL in the xsl import command with a local file or files on my Windows machine? I don't know how to do this. 3. (Now for my really naive question). What's the best way to debug XSLT messages. Should I start at the source xsl of the file(s) being imported here. Or should I be looking up references in Saxon parser or using some Oxygen debugging view. I realize that the answer is probably "it depends", but where does one start first? Thanks. Robert 3) Robert Nagle 12777 Ashford Point Dr #1417 Houston, Texas 77082 713 893 3424 htpt://www.robertnagle.info