Extension functions

[Phillip Lord]

        I'm a little confused about the return conversion of values
from a Xalan extension function. 

        Ideally I would like to return something like an iterator
and then operate over that object within XSL. 


        So for instance.....


        
    <xsl:variable name="iterator"
      select="java:getIterator( $java_object )"/>


       where $java_object is some appropriate object that I have 
previously created. 

        Now this all works fine, but I was sort of assuming that 
I could then operate on this object which appears not to be the
case. For instance if I try

    <xsl:message>
      Iterator
      <xsl:value-of select="java:toString( $iterator )"/>
    </xsl:message>

       then I get a crash. 

        Which is a little annoying.

        Now of course there are a couple of alternatives here. 
I could for instance write a wrapper Object which takes objects of 
type $java_object in the constructor. That way I could create an
object with Xalan that I should have access to. But it's really
messy. 

       I was under the impression that if the return type of a
function where not of a set of specific XSLT types, then it would be
left as a non XSLT object, and I should be able to operate on it as a
Java object. 

        But I can't.

        Any ideas about how I can get this to work. Alternatively 
is there another way that I can manipulate Java objects with Xalan.

        Thanks

        Phil