I'll try it.
Go raibh maith agat
Mark

Hi,
I am using an XSLT template to produce an XHTML table.

 Currently, the
stylesheet fills the table in a horizontal direction; I would like to fill
the table in a vertical direction.

Instead of thinking of filling a table, think of it as a mapping from
the input tree to the output grid... Each output tr will start with the
nth input item and then have the n + NRth item, then n + NR * 2, and so
on, where NR is the number of rows (rounded up to the nearest integer if
there's a partial row).

You can work out the total number of rows (I'd store it in an XSLT
variable for clarity) e.g. in the template for List you could do
<xsl:template match="List">
 <xsl:variable name="rowcount"
     select="(ncount(Item[@lang eq $langcode]) + 2) div 3"
     as="xs:integer" />
(if you are still in 1998 and XSLT 1, leave of the "as" attribute and
use = instead of eq)

 <!--* now you can map the Items to table cells. *-->
 <xsl:for-each
   select="Item[@lang eq $langcode][position() &lt;= $rowcount]">
   <xsl:apply-templates select="." />
 </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

In this example $langcode is a global parameter to the stylesheet, but
to handle both languages make it a tunnel parameter, or in XSLT 1 make
it a literal parameter and add it as an argument to the List template,
or if List generates the tables, you could instead do,
 <xsl:for-each select="distinct-values(Item/@lang)">
   generate a table in here
 </xsl:for-each>
perhaps with an xsl:sort instruction in there :)

--
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/