> Am I the only one to find odd that "position()" evaluates to 
> the position of the current group instead of 1, i.e., the 
> position of the first city in the current group (contrast 
> with "@country")?

It seems logical to me: xsl:for-each-group iterates over the groups, so it
makes sense that within the body of the instruction, position() ranges from
1 to last(), and last() gives the number of iterations. This provides a way
of numbering the groups, knowing how many groups there are, testing whether
the current group is the last, and so on.

@country is a property of a node. position() is not a property of a node, it
is a property of an iteration over a sequence. So it's reasonable that they
should behave differently.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/