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The node-name() function is anomalous. Other functions that return a property of a node, for example base-uri(), name(), local-name(), namespace-uri(), generate-id(), string() have a zero-arity form that takes the context item as the implicit first argument. Some other functions that do this: number(), string-length(), normalize-space(). node-name() might be expected to follow this pattern, but doesn't. Similarly, though perhaps with less usability impact, document-uri() and data(). We ought to be consistent.
root() is another one that DOES have a zero-arity variant (proving that it's not only a design that was adopted for 1.0 functions and abandoned in 2.0).
I agree - we should allow this for node-name(),document-uri(), and data().
According to my records this we agreed on 2010-05-14 to add zero-argument forms of the three functions node-name(), data(), and document-uri(), and I am therefore closing this belatedly as FIXED/RESOLVED.