Forward compatibility

XSLT processors developed to support XSLT version 1.0 should be able to cope with stylesheets developed to conform to a later version of this standard. When the stylesheet contains a Version attribute with a value other than '1.0', the processor should adopt a 'forwards-compatible' mode to help it cope with unexpected features.

When the processor has adopted this mode, it is given permission to ignore any top-level elements that it does not recognize:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.3">
  <xsl:import.../>
  ...
  <xsl:new-feature /> <!-- 1.0 processors IGNORE -->
  ...
  <xsl:template>...</xsl:template>
  ...
</xsl:stylesheet>

Also, any unexpected elements appearing within a template do not cause an error. It is possible to step over such ...

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