Counting nodes processed

I've got a need to limit the amount of ouput generated in a translation.  Assume the following xml

<category value="category1">
  <topic value="topic1"/>
  <topic value="topic2"/>
  <topic value="topic3"/>
</category>
<category value="category2">
  <topic value="topic1"/>
  <topic value="topic2"/>
  <topic value="topic3"/>
</category>

How would I limit my total number of topics output to say 4 topics?  This is straight forward in code, but not sure how to do it xsl?  Basically the output would be topic1,2 and 3 from category1 and topic 1 from category 2

Thanks,
Jay

Jay Scherer
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Huntsville, AL 35806
(256)963-8130
Sun Certified Developer For The Java Platform
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