Re: xsl:apply-templates to all but...

> <xsl:apply-templates select="*[not(self::y)][not(self::z)]"/>

Nice idea, I'm glad I asked! And (thanks Michael) once again XSLT 2.0, or
in this case XPath 2.0, makes something else possible with a more concise
syntax.

> But the output here would be Y X Z not Y Z X.......

My mistake in the example. I was trying to show that I wanted to output y
out of sequence and meant to say that I wanted to output the children of w
in (y,x,z) order.

Bob