//item
are you sure that you want to use // here (or anywhere) it is very
expensive causing a full search of the entire document for item
elements. If you know that the item elements are at a particular depth
using an explict path (or an xsl:key) is likely to be quicker.
<!-- I am not sure how to make this one break out of the loop when $remaining
is hit -->
You can never "break out" of an xsl:for-each, the thing to do is just
not select the elements that you don't want to process.
I didn't fully follow your program logic but if this comment means that
you want to process all but the last $remaining nodes in the selection
then you can do
<xsl:for-each select="(...... whatever you had before)
[position() < last()-$remaining]">
...
David
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