> 
> This is actually a good use for xsl:for-each --
> 
> <xsl:for-each select="ancestor::*">
>    <xsl:text>.</xsl:text>
> </xsl:for-each>
> 
And in XPath 2.0 you can replace this with

<xsl:value-of select="pad-string('.', count(ancestor::*))"/>

Mike Kay

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list