I was mistaken here; the count will apply to COMPONENT children of COMPONENT
children of the current node.

<xsl:for-each select="COMPONENT[position() lt;= ceiling(count(COMPONENT) div
2)]">

Try this:

<xsl:for-each select="COMPONENT[position() lt;= ceiling(count(../COMPONENT)
div 2)]


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list