XSLT converts CDATA sections into text by default. I need this to not
happen, and I was informed (on the perl-xml mailing list) that <xsl:output
cdata-section-elements="..."> would do the trick. It doesn't.

Here's a simple example.  This is the identity transformation from section
7.5 of the XSLT 1.0 spec, plus a <xsl:output> element to preserve the CDATA.

stylesheet: (id.xsl)
=====
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:foo="http://foo.org">
  <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>
  <xsl:output cdata-section-elements="foo:elt"/>
</xsl:stylesheet>
=====

xml input: (test.xml)
=====
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root xmlns:foo="http://foo.org">
  <foo:elt>
    <![CDATA[>]]>
  </foo:elt>
</root>
=====

When I run "xsltproc id.xsl test.xml", here's the output:
=====
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root xmlns:foo="http://foo.org">
  <foo:elt>
    &gt;
  </foo:elt>
</root>
=====

As you see, the CDATA section has still been converted to text.

I've tested this with 1.0.31 and CVS (as at 28 Aug 2003).  I've marked this
bug as a "blocker" because I really can't use libxslt if it doesn't
preserve CDATA sections.

Incidentally, the only reason that I'm using libxslt in the first place is
that libxml2 doesn't have any namespace normalisation support.  What I'm
actually doing is simply adding elements into an XML document that declares
a namespace in its root element.  The new elements that I add all get a
redundant namespace declaration in them which I don't want explicitly
written in -- I want them (for aesthetic and space reasons) to inherit the
root element's namespace (which is the only namespace in use anywhere in
the document).  It would be an enormous help to me to have a method in
libxml2 to do some namespace normalisation.  Even just a simple case such
as this for the time being would suffice if a more complete solution is too
hard.

Basically, I just want to be able to normalise this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root xmlns="http://foo.org">
 <elt xmlns="http://foo.org"/>
</root>

into this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root xmlns="http://foo.org">
 <elt/>
</root>

The "id.xsl" transformation above happens to do this for me, but I also
need CDATA sections to be preserved as such, not converted to text. 
Perhaps whatever namespace normalisation is being quietly done by libxslt
could be added to libxml2?

If you have any other solution for achieving this, as a workaround to the
bug reported above in libxslt, that would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
- Steve