> oops I got the first one wrong, still in some places in the world it's
> not midnight,someone else can fix it before I wake up:-)


apparently not:-)
So here is a fix (just a change to the light red clause)


David

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:output indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="root">
  <root>
  <xsl:for-each-group select="*"
  group-starting-with="*[@color=('dark-red','light-red')]">
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="@color=('light-red')">
      <xsl:copy-of select="current-group()[position()!=1]"/>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:when test="@color=('dark-red')">
      <red>
        <xsl:copy-of
  select="current-group(),current-group()[last()]/following-sibling::*"/>
  </red>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:copy-of select="current-group()"/>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:for-each-group>
  </root>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>