Counter values in attributes??

I'd like some enlightenment on counters if there's any to be had.  I'm
having problems with this scenario:  I have a parent tag (container)
that contains a variable number of children.  I want to prepare an HTML
table that has a header cell containing the description of the
container.  I want this header cell to span the same number of columns
as there are children.

For example, the XML:

   <container>
      <description>My Kids</description>
      <child>Child 1</child>
      <child>Child 2</child>
      <child>Child 3</child>
   </container>

Should get turned into a table like:

   +-----------------------------+
   |           My Kids           |
   +---------+---------+---------+
   | Child 1 | Child 2 | Child 3 |
   +---------+---------+---------+

I'm trying to use a counter to count all the container's children.  I
have a template matching the child tag in the "count" mode which
increments the "childCount" counter.  Next I want to include the value
of the "childCount" counter as the COLSPAN tag of the TD for the
description header.  I've tried all sorts of things to get the counter
value as an attribute to no avail (See XSL below). 

----------- XSL Snippet -----------
<xsl:template match="container">
	<!-- COUNT MY CHILDREN -->
	<xsl:counter-reset name="childCount"/>
	<xsl:apply-templates select="child" mode="count"/>

	<TD COLSPAN="{../xsl:counters[@name='bubbleCount']/@value}">
		<xsl:apply-templates select="description"/>
	</TD>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="child" mode="count">
	<xsl:counter-increment name="childCount"/>
</xsl:template>


So, is there a way to get the counter value other than <xsl:counter
name="childCount"/> (which won't work in the attribute)?  If not, how
else might I solve this problem?

Evan Easton


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