Using a for-each and testing position() seems clumsy, compared with explicit
indexing.

What's wrong with

<entry tag="{td[1]}" attribute="{td[2]}" type="{td[3]}"
description="{td[4]}"/>

Not coming from a C/C++ world, I can't see why you would want to use
variables.

Ordered XSLT Cookbook yesterday, so I'l dive into more advance
examples than just the xsl:for-each and xsl:variable example I read so
far...

thanks,
-M