[xml] XPath expression portability framework dependance

[Stefano Debenedetti <ste webaccess mozquito com>]

Daniel Veillard wrote:
> Registering the namespace in the XPath evaluation context is less
> portable but easier to understand. Note that the XPath specification
> was not done with the expectation it would be used standalone but
> always in a framework (XSLT and XPointer originally) which were 
> defining the mechanism for the context initialization.

Now, this seems to me a very interesting topic because I have been 
trying to use the current() XSLT function in a standalone XPath query 
and I couldn't find a way to do that using the python bindings of 
libxml2 +libxslt but both xalan and saxon XPath implementations support 
it by default even in standalone XPath queries.

Is there a way to do use the current() function in a standalone XPath 
using libxml2+libxslt too? Is it more standards-compliant than the 
solution taken by xalan&saxon? Or is it that the framework-dependance of 
 XPath means that there is not a standard way to do that?

I am interested because this seems like potential XPath portability 
problems between, say, an XForms implementation written in java and one 
written in python....

Thanks, ciao
ste