RE: sorting titles w stopwords but w/o value in every

>  <xsl:variable name="output">
>   <xsl:for-each select="//section-02">
>    <xsl:sort 
> select="exsl:node-set($sort-titles)/*[@doc-number = 
> current()/doc-number]"/>

If you're lucky, the optimizer will extract

   exsl:node-set($sort-titles)/*

as a subexpression that can be evaluated outside the loop. 

In case you're not so lucky, it would be better to put it in a variable:

<xsl:variable name="ref" select="exsl:node-set($sort-titles)/*"/>
<xsl:variable name="output">
   <xsl:for-each select="//section-02">
    <xsl:sort 
 select="$ref[@doc-number = current()/doc-number]"/>

Or even better, use a key.

Michael Kay