Re: dynamically applying templates

Within those templates, there were two core modes: full and short.
Originally, I had carried the citation/bibliography thing through the descendants, but that doesn't really make much sense when you consider footnote citations are often full bib references. Hence, full and short (for titles, names, etc.).

I tend to think this logic makes sense to keep.

I don't mean to second-guess your reasoning. I just wanted to be clear that the "bibliography" mode didn't appear to be helping in this particular case. If you need it for some larger reason, fine. (Just make sure it doesn't clash with the traversal of the cs: nodes. Maybe they're the ones that don't need the mode.)

Note: I do have a function (again, with Jeni's help) that determines the type of mods record (book, etc.), but I've not thought about whether and how to bring that over to the cs:* stuff.

That might be exactly what you want.

Say if your input made the reference type explicit, <mods type="book">...</mods>, then the select expression could read select="$style-biblio/cs:entry/cs:reftype[@name=current()/@type]

.... thereby choosing whatever reftype matched the type given in the mods input.

Your function might be to do exactly this, for all I know. :->