I can't see any need to have any new syntax to specify such a starting
node (The facility that it is set outside the stylesheet was
already in
XSLT1) IF you need this set in the stylesheet just go
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:apply-templates select="/part/book/chapter/sect1[3]/sect2[4]"/>
which has the same effect in a much more obvious way.
Surely the point of specifying a starting node would be to operate
on a sub-document so that in your example /part/book/index would
be invisible to the XSLT processing. Your 'equivalent' syntax requires
the whole document to exist in memory.
Regards
Ed Willink
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