Hi,

> Is there some easy way -- in XSLT 2.0 -- to handle in a general way
> collapsing number ranges like:
>
> 23-24 => 23-4
> 333-334 => 333-34
> 7777-7778 => 7777-78
>
> The source will be like:
>
> <biblioref linkend="one" units="page" begin="23" end="24" />

Can't really see what you algorithm is, but here's a wild guess, just call
x:range('23-24')

  <xsl:function name="x:range">
    <xsl:param name="range" as="xs:string"/>
    <xsl:variable name="first" select="substring-before($range, '-')"/>
    <xsl:variable name="second" select="substring-after($range, '-')"/>
    <xsl:sequence select="concat($first, '-', x:remove($first, $second,
1))"/>
  </xsl:function>
  <xsl:function name="x:remove">
    <xsl:param name="s1" as="xs:string"/>
    <xsl:param name="s2" as="xs:string"/>
    <xsl:param name="i"  as="xs:integer"/>
    <xsl:sequence select="if (substring($s1, $i, 1) = substring($s2, $i, 1))
                          then x:remove($s1, $s2, $i + 1)
                          else
                            if (string-length($s2) &lt; 3)
                            then substring($s2, $i)
                            else substring($s2, $i - 1)"/>
  </xsl:function>

Cheers,

Jarno - Rotersand: Merging Oceans