[xslt] Authentication support

["Elliotte Harold" <erharold gmail com>]

I need to write an XSLT stylesheet that that downloads a page protected by HTTP authentication; i.e. I need to supply a username and password. I tried using a URL like

https://user:pass host/file.xml

but I got the message 

unable to parse https://user:pass host/file.xml

I can always set up a cron job to download the file with curl and then hit it with xsltproc, but is there a simpler way? Is there any means of providing xsltproc with a username and password to be used for HTTP authentication?

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold
erharold gmail com