Re: dynamically generating css

What I suggest is that you turn your stylesheet inside-out. Instead of
working from the top down to the elements that you want to create
styles for, work from those elements up to their ancestor <cs:reftype>
element in order to create the CSS class names.

That makes sense.  I was just not seeing how to do that, but your
example helps clarify it!

My second customization problem will sound familiar, but basically I
want to read the external file to set the order of processing.  So, my
file may have:

<creator>
  <name/>
  </role>/
</creator>
<year/>
<title/>
<container> <!-- maps to mods:relatedItem[@type='host']
  <title/>
</container>

And then I want to use that as the template for the layout.  My
question, is, do I need to somehow rethink the structure of the below
sort of template?  If so, how?

<!-- take processed biblist and run templates on them in bib mode, with
different templates
for each primary citation class (author-year, footnote, numbered, etc.)
-->
<xsl:template
match="mods:modsCollection[$citation-class='author-year']"
mode="bibliography">
  <xsl:variable name="first" as="xs:boolean" select="position() = 1" />
  <xsl:variable name="author-name" select="bib:grouping-key(.)"/>
  <xsl:for-each-group select="mods:mods" group-by="bib:grouping-key(.)">
    <xsl:for-each select="current-group()">
      <xsl:variable name="first" as="xs:boolean" select="position() =
1" />
      <p class="bibref" id="{@ID}">
	<xsl:value-of select="$bibref-before"/>
	<span class="creator">
	  <xsl:choose>
	    <xsl:when test="count(current-group()) = 1">
	      <xsl:choose>
		<xsl:when test="not($first and position() = 1)">
		  <xsl:text>.</xsl:text>
		</xsl:when>
		<xsl:otherwise>
		  <xsl:choose>
		    <xsl:when test="mods:name">
		      <xsl:apply-templates select="mods:name" mode="bibliography"/>
		    </xsl:when>
		    <xsl:otherwise>
<!-- if no author name, substitute periodical name, or "anonymous";
generated in temporary tree-->
		      <xsl:value-of select="mods:noname-substitute"/>
		    </xsl:otherwise>
		  </xsl:choose>
		</xsl:otherwise>
	      </xsl:choose>
	    </xsl:when>
	    <xsl:otherwise>
	      <xsl:choose>
		<xsl:when test="mods:name">
		  <xsl:apply-templates select="mods:name" mode="bibliography"/>
		</xsl:when>
		<xsl:otherwise>
		  <xsl:value-of select="mods:noname-substitute"/>
		</xsl:otherwise>
	      </xsl:choose>
	    </xsl:otherwise>
	  </xsl:choose>
	</span>
<!--
I think all the way up to here is general across all author-year
styles.  So the question
is how do I make the remaining processing order configurable.  Do I
want to create here
another template similar to the CSS one that handles this and then just
call it here?

If yes, then do I need to do something similar for the children
templates (like mods:relatedItem)?
-->
	<xsl:apply-templates select="mods:year"/>
	<xsl:apply-templates select="mods:titleInfo[not(@type='abbreviated')]"
			     mode="bibliography"/>
	<xsl:apply-templates select="mods:originInfo" mode="bibliography"/>
	<xsl:apply-templates select="mods:relatedItem" mode="bibliography"/>
	<xsl:apply-templates select="mods:location" mode="bibliography"/>
	<xsl:value-of select="$bibref-after"/>
      </p>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:for-each-group>
</xsl:template>