[xslt] XPath number formatting

["William M. Brack" <wbrack mmm com hk>]

There has been a recent bug report
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337565) concerning the formatting
of numbers by libxslt (actually by libxml2's xpath.c).  After reading through
the XPath spec, it appears to me that this report is probably correct. 
However, before I implement a "fix", I would like to give list members a
chance to voice any potential disagreement.

The essence of the problem is this:  According to the spec, when a number is
converted to a string (Section 4.2 String Functions),

   "if the number is an integer, the number is represented in decimal
   form as a Number with no decimal point and no leading zeros,
   preceded by a minus sign (-) if the number is negative"

However, there doesn't seem to be any good definition of what an "integer" is.
 In particular, should a number which is greater than MAX_INT on some system
still be treated as an "integer"?  The existing code within our library
doesn't do this - instead, it treats it as a "non-integer" and outputs the
value in exponential form.  I believe this is incorrect, but would welcome any
opposing views.

Bill