Re: position() problem with // axis + parent numbering probl

>  In fact they are mutually exclusive (whooops), 

exactly!

> just not what I was expecting.
what were you expecting? It looks OK to me.
Perhaps you wanted the (//text)[1] form which only returns one node
(see the second half of my example in first reply).



> Note that the first template has been called twice, and a position() call
> inside the template returns the correct position in the context list, yet
> the result appears to conflict with the predicate [1]

no they are not in conflict.

//text[1] is short for

/descendant-or-self::node()/child::text[1]

so the [1] refers to the order in the last step, ie the count from the
parent. this is not the same as /descendant-or-self::text[1] 
so your node list selected in teh for-each selects every text node
that is the first text child of its parent. there are two of those
in your example, and so when _that_ list is being processed they have
position() 1 and 2 respectively.

David


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