Not sure this helps, but I get 12 sec for the shell script & only
3.5 with the stylesheet using 3 rinses on xhtml.rng. This is
with Saxon 6.5.3 on RedHat with a 2.4GHz proc. Sounds like it
might still be something environmental rather than Saxon.
Kev.
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list