XSL:sort dates as numbers gets incorrect results

I have an XML document that have about 200 nodes that
look roughly like this:

<root>
<news>
<industry>Aerospace</industry>
<lastupdated>7/28/2005 12:10:00 PM</lastupdated>
<title>News from aerospace</title>
</news>
<news>
<industry>Mechanical</industry>
<lastupdated>7/28/2005 12:23:00 AM</lastupdated>
<title>News from mechanical</title>
</news>
<news>
<industry>Aerospace</industry>
<lastupdated>7/28/2005 9:12:00 PM</lastupdated>
<title>News from aerospace</title>
</news>
<news>
<industry>Electrical</industry>
<lastupdated>7/28/2005 6:01:00 AM</lastupdated>
<title>News from electrical</title>
</news>
<news>
<industry>Computer Science</industry>
<lastupdated>3/28/2002 12:01:00 AM</lastupdated>
<title>News from CS</title>
</news>
<news>
<industry>Aerospace</industry>
<lastupdated>4/28/2005 12:01:00 AM</lastupdated>
<title>News from aerospace</title>
</news>
</root>

I need to display top 3 items in reverse chronological
order that have either Aerospace or Electrical as
industry. I need the first 2 (assuming they are sorted
by lastupdated).

I need to sort these nodes where industry is Aerospace
or Electrical (for example), sort them by lastupdated
(reverse chronological). I am able to do that so far
successfully. Its just that I need to display the top
2 items (of the 3 or more that are selected). How do I
accomplish that? I cannot use the position(), because
it relates to the nodes in the document, not the
position of nodes after sort.

Here is the XSL:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
<table>
<xsl:for-each select="root/news[industry/text() =
'Aerospace' or
industry/text() = 'Electrical']
"> 

<!-- lastupdated is MM/DD/YYYY HH:MI:SS XM e.g.
7/27/2005 4:12:22 PM -->
<xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number"
select='substring-after(substring-after(substring-before(LASTUPDATED,
" "), "/"), "/")'></xsl:sort>
<!-- sort the yyyy as number -->
<xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number"
select='substring-before(substring-before(LASTUPDATED,
" "), "/")'></xsl:sort>
<!-- sort MM as number -->
<xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number"
select='substring-after(substring-before(LASTUPDATED,
" "), "/")'></xsl:sort>
<!-- sort date as number -->
<xsl:sort order="descending"
select='substring-after(substring-after(LASTUPDATED, "
"), " ")'></xsl:sort>
<!-- within day, sort XM (AM/PM) as string, PM first
-->
<xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number"
select='substring-before(substring-after(LASTUPDATED,
" "), ":")'></xsl:sort>
<!-- sort the HH as number -->
<xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number"
select='substring-before(substring-after(substring-after(LASTUPDATED,
" "), ":"), ":")'></xsl:sort>
<!-- sort the MM as number --> 
<!-- The one problem currently with this approach is
that 12:20 AM will be considered latest when compared
to 9:20 AM -->

<xsl:if test="position() &lt; 4">

		<tr><td>
			<xsl:value-of
select='concat(substring-before(substring-after(lastupdated,
" "), ":"), ":",
substring-before(substring-after(substring-after(lastupdated,
" "), ":"), ":"), " ",
substring-after(substring-after(lastupdated, " "), "
"), " ET, ", substring-before(lastupdated, " "))' /> 
			
		</td></tr>

<tr><td>
<xsl:value-of select="title"/>
</td></tr>
</xsl:if> 

</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>


I get the results fine, but the problem I have is that
12:10:00 PM comes before 9:12:00 PM, which is
incorrect (reverse chronological). Same behavior for
12:23:00 AM displaying before 6:01:00 AM.

Please help.




	
		
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