My main question is the correct way to use replace() to remove special
characters and spaces that appear in document titles. Some I just want
to remove and others I want to translate to something else.

I have this much working

<xsl:function name="ping:gen_id">
B B B B <xsl:param name="INSTRING"/>
B B B B <xsl:value-of select="translate(replace(lower-case($INSTRING), '
', '_'),
B B B B ':()','')"/>
</xsl:function>

To the replace I wanted to add the ' character to replace with
nothing. I tried adding \' \\' &apo; '' to no avail.

In XPath 2.0 and later you can use two single quotes inside a single
quoted string e.g. ':()''' or ''''.

This iss a sample of a string I'm trying to modify:

"Step 9: Create the application's resource access grant"

So I asked coPilot what should be done and it came up with:

<xsl:template match="/">
B B B  <xsl:variable name="inputString" select="'This is a string with a
single quote: 'example''" />
B B B  <xsl:variable name="outputString" select="translate($inputString,
&apos;&apos;, '')" />
B B B  <xsl:value-of select="$outputString" />
</xsl:template>

This throws a different error around creating the inputString.

Unexpected token name "example" beyond end of expression

Which leads to the other part of my question about how you would
create a string variable with an ' in the content. I imagine it
will be the same answer, but wanted to post this for completion of the
question.