[xsl] A tricky problem

["Carlos M. S. Bento Nogueira" <cmsbn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello!

I'm trying to create a piece of xsl code that dinamicaly displays items on 
a table.This seems a basic problem at first glance, but if you're 
curious(and a bit pacient) please continue reading :)

This is my item list:(temp.xml)
<fd:selection-list>
	<fd:item value="Dcor"/>
	<fd:item value="DAo"/>
	<fd:item value="InsAo"/>
	<fd:item value="EstAo"/>
</fd:selection-list>

Note that i cannot change the item properties, e.g. , to add another 
attribute like position="row" to fd:item nor
can i add description tags between item lists e.g. :

<fd:item value="Dcor"/>
<row></row>
<fd:item value="DAo"/>


The description of this item lists is passed to the xsl by 
snippet:(temp_action.xml)
<table border="0">
<tr>
(...)
<td>
	<ft:widget id="diagnostico_opcoes">
		<fi:styling list-type="radio" 
list-orientation="horizontal" line="2" column="2"/>
	</ft:widget>
</td>
(...)
</tr>
where we describe the list orientation layout and number of columns and 
rows we want on a table.

The piece of xsl code which iterates through the items on this list is 
given by this snippet:
<xsl:for-each select="descendant-or-self::fi:item">
(..)
</xsl:for-each>
although the following piece of code also produces the same results:
<xsl:for-each select="fi:selection-list/fi:item">
(...)
</xsl:for-each>

Inside the iteration code snippet, i should build a set of instructions 
that could produce an HTML output like
<td>
     	<input name="Dcor" .../>
<td/>
<td>
	<input name="Dao" .../>
<td/>
<tr>
<td>
    	<input name="InsAo" .../>
<td/>
<td>
	<input name="EstAo" .../>
<td/>
<tr/>


My last attemp to produce this, was the following piece of code:

<xsl:variable name="elements" 
select="count(descendant-or-self::fi:item)"/>
<xsl:for-each select="descendant-or-self::fi:item">

	<!-- Counts the iteration number temp= 1,2,3,4 ... -->
	<xsl:variable name="temp" 
select="($elements)-(count(following-sibling::*))"/>

		<xsl:if test="$temp&lt;$line">
			<tr>
			<xsl:if test="temp&lt;$column">
				<td>
					<input type="radio" ..../>
				</td>
			</xsl:if>
			</tr>
		</xsl:if>
(...)

This would work great if instead of if test="..." i had a
for-each select="(1 to $line)"
	for-each select="(1 to $column)"
and although this is possible since i'm using Saxon8 it doesn't do the 
trick for
the following reasons:
- i should only change lines if i have $line>=2
- the following snippet is invalid as a mean to insert lines between 
columns:
	<xsl:if test="$line&gt;=2">
	<tr>
	</xsl:if>

	(code to show inputs here)

	<xsl:if test="$line&gt;=2">
	</tr>
	</xsl:if>


- i found no way of iterating one by one element without selecting all the 
elements nodes previously
  with a (for-each="fi:selection-list/fi:item")

Any ideas to overcome this problem would be great.Please be so kind to 
include some code snippets
to illustrate.

TIA,
CarlosN.