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It took me some time to figure out the path abbreviation rules, both as an user and as an implementor. It might be just because of my XPath knowledge, but I wonder if it would have been better if it were just another axis with convenient syntax, like maybe "/r:purchaseOrder/-/r:regions" instead of "/r:purchaseOrder/r:regions".
WG agrees that there is some confusion here; need to investigate options further.