Handling position in non-atomic sequences

Hi folks,

if a sequence stored in a variable consists of elements, we can not use the
nice function index-of().

Also, if the variable is typed as="element()*" I cannot use the axes
preceding-sibling or following-sibling. I can solve that by not typing the
variable or use  as="document-node()" after adding <xsl:document> to the
variable's sequence constructor.

My current solution finding the position of the first <h1> in a sequence would
be something like:

count($seq/h1[1]/preceding-sibling::*) + 1

with $seq being a sequence typed as document-node().

Are there better methods to get the position of a certain element in the
sequence?

In my scenario I collect a certain set of elements using xsl:copy-of and want
to process them in the context of that sequence (regarding position) and not
in the context of their original document location.

Thanks a lot for any pointers,

- Michael