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xsl:mode has two attributes e.g. initial="yes", visibility="private". We don't specify how these interact. I wonder whether initial=yes!no is needed; can't we say that any mode that is public in the top-level package is eligible to be used as the initial mode, and any mode that is not public in the top-level package is not eligible?
We noted that if someone tries to specify visibility=public and initial=no on a mode, then an application could get around this restriction by creating a trivial package containing an apply-templates instruction in that mode. So we think the "initial" attribute is pointless. There may be some documentary value, but this can equally be achieved using visibility="public". Agreed that it makes little sense.
We further noted that initial=yes|no was added to the spec before we introduced packages and visibility.
Change now applied to the spec.