> Is it possible  to find the position of an element while ignoring all 
> elements containing no text. For example, given the following:
> 
> <furniture>
> <item>table</item>
> <item/>
> <item>chair</item>
> </furniture>
> 
> I would like to output:
> 
> Furniture
> 1. table
> 2. chair


Lots of ways, one being:

<xsl:template match="furniture">
  <xsl:for-each select="item[child::node()]">
    <xsl:value-of select="position()"/>. <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

The for-each will iterate over each <item> node that has a child node
(whitespace included).  The function position() will return the position
of the node within the set selected by the for-each.

cheers
andrew