Greetings. I'm fairly new to XSLT and I have a problem.

I have a page that includes the following nodes:

  <xsl:template name="deptIndex">
    <xsl:variable name="colCount" select="3"/>
    <xsl:element name="p">
      Department Index
    </xsl:element>
    <xsl:element name="table">
    <xsl:for-each select="pcr_report/info/department[position() mod $colCount = 1]">
      <xsl:element name="tr">
        <xsl:apply-templates select=". | following-sibling::pcr_report/info/department[position() &lt; $colCount]"
            mode="deptIndexTD"/>
      </xsl:element>
    </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="department" mode="deptIndexTD">
    <xsl:element name="td">
      <xsl:element name="a">
        <xsl:attribute name="href">
          <xsl:value-of select="concat('#', .)"/>
        </xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
      </xsl:element>
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:template>

These nodes display an index of departments at the top of a larger page.

Currently they display simply as a very long vertical list.

I need them to display in 5 columns like this:

Dept1 Dept5 Dept9 Dept13 Dept17
Dept2 Dept6 Dept10 Dept14 Dept18
Dept3 Dept7 Dept11 Dept15 Dept19
Dept4 Dept8 Dept12 Dept16 Dept20

I saw this thread: http://p2p.wrox.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_...hTerms=columns which I think addresses the issue, but I must admit that I wasn't able to follow it.

Any help would be appreciated.

You've got a context problem with this code:

<xsl:for-each select="pcr_report/info/department[position() mod $colCount = 1]">
      <xsl:element name="tr">
        <xsl:apply-templates select=". | following-sibling::pcr_report/info/department[position() &lt; $colCount]"

You haven't shown your source document, but I suspect that a department doesn't have a following-sibling::pcr_report. You probably want to go up two levels first: ../../following-sibling::pcr_report.

You've got some awfully long-winded code here. Instead of

   <xsl:element name="td">
      <xsl:element name="a">
        <xsl:attribute name="href">
          <xsl:value-of select="concat('#', .)"/>
        </xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
      </xsl:element>
    </xsl:element>

why not write:

<td>
  <a href="#{.}">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </a>
</td>

XSLT has a reputation for being verbose but you don't need to make it that bad!

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

I agree with you on the long-windedness.

For the record, I didn't write those nodes, I was just assigned to alter them.

:)