> Is it possible to achieve the same results, but after first 
> sorting

without wanting to start another thread on the merits of xsl wrt perl or
omnimark, I think it's fair to say xslt isn't too happy processing a
sorted node list.

The answer to your question is yes (I think)

but before answering that, are you prepared to use extensions such as
the node-set() function available in xt, saxon, xalan (and in msxml2 in
a rather odd way)  Given this bit of help your existing stylesheet
can trivially be made to work on the sorted list.

David


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