absolute position() of TEI pb

<pb/> elements can mark a page break in different positions in the TEI
structure.

//pb/position() gives me the positional number of all of the page breaks, 1
thru n.

and something like (//pb)[position()=3] gives me the third page, for example.

But I want to process the document thru the identity transform, with only a
different template for the page breaks.
And I need, in the context of that template, to get the page number in the
sequence.
In that context  <xsl:variable name=bposb select=bposition()b /> gives
me a number :
I donbt know what that number is relative to, as I canbt detect the
pattern, but itbs definitely not the absolute sequence number I want.

I canbt figure out how to do this. Is there a way to get that value within
the template ?

I was thinking I could find some xpath expression using the self:: axis, but
so far that has eluded me.


The larger task Ibm trying to do is to match up the <pb> elements in a TEI
file with page-images in another XML file by page sequence.


b Steve Majewski / UVA Alderman Library