> Unfortunately my problem is that I did want to use a "copy-of" so that the nodes being referred to
> by the <ref> tag are actually "stitched" into the tree.

I have no idea what you mean by stiched here. The code I posed roduced
the output you saod you needed, if in fact you need different output I
suggest that you repost with a different sample result.

I applied templates to the refereneced nodes.

> <xsl:template match="ref">
>  <xsl:apply-templates select="key('r',@name)"/>
> </xsl:template>


You generate a new tree in memory that consist just of a document node
with child the referenced nodes, and then apply templates to that.

    <xsl:template match="ref[@name]"> 
        <xsl:variable name="x">
            <xsl:copy-of select="key('r',@name)"/>
        </xsl:variable>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="$x"/>
    </xsl:template>

This takes mre memory, because of the copy but will produce the smae
result unless your have a template matching / that does something other
han the default action of applying templates to your children, or if the
templates that match the referenced nodes use Xpath expressions to
select their parsents or any other ancestor, as in my version they will
have the parents they had in the original tree, but in your version the
tree only has these nodes,all with parent /

David

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