Apparently, when the stylesheet is written to produce a comment before the root element, XSLTC fires off a LexicalHandler.comment callback before it calls the ContentHandler.startDocument callback.

I believe this is a violation of the SAX contract.
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See the attachment for the test case. Run it as:
"java XSLT test.xsl test.xsl"
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The xalan.jar file I used is the one Ramesh posted to wspack-tech as the first package-renamed drop. The META-INF/MANIFEST.MF says:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.5.2
Created-By: 1.4.1_02-b06 (Sun Microsystems Inc.)
Main-Class: org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process

Name: org/apache/xalan
Comment: Main Xalan engine implementing TrAX/JAXP
Specification-Title: Java API for XML Processing
Specification-Version: 1.2
Specification-Vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
Implementation-Title: Main Xalan Engine Implementation
Implementation-Version: xalan-j_2_5_2
Implementation-Vendor: Apache Software Foundation
Implementation-Vendor-Id: org.apache
Implementation-URL: http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/dist/
Extension-Name: org.apache.xalan

Name: org/apache/xpath
Comment: XPath engine
Implementation-Title: XPath Engine Implementation of Xalan
Implementation-Version: xalan-j_2_5_2
Implementation-Vendor: Apache Software Foundation
Implementation-Vendor-Id: org.apache
Implementation-URL: http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/dist/
Extension-Name: org.apache.xpath

Name: org/apache/xml
Comment: DTM implementation and utilities
Implementation-Title: DTM and utitlity Implementation of Xalan
Implementation-Version: xalan-j_2_5_2
Implementation-Vendor: Apache Software Foundation
Implementation-Vendor-Id: org.apache
Implementation-URL: http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/dist/
Extension-Name: org.apache.xml


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