Thanks!  This looks great.  I've tried doing a simpler version of this,
but the problem I'm running into is that I need to use the variable
within a "xsl:for-each" loop, so I can't use the absolute method you
use in your xsl:call-template name="str-pad" parameters above.  Below
is some code showing the trouble I'm running into.  Sorry to be dense,
but can you help me figure out how to set the variables properly?

Thanks so much!

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

	<xsl:output method="text" />

	<xsl:variable name="whitespace" select="'                       '"/>

	<xsl:template match="/root">

		<xsl:variable name="padFoo">
			<xsl:call-template name="runStrPad">
				<xsl:with-param name="string" select="foo"/>
				<xsl:with-param name="length" select="16"/>
			</xsl:call-template>
		</xsl:variable>

		<xsl:for-each select="myElement"><xsl:value-of
select="$padFoo"/></xsl:for-each>
	</xsl:template>

	<xsl:template name="runStrPad">
		<xsl:param name="string"/>
		<xsl:param name="length"/>
		(runStrPad params: <xsl:value-of select="$string"/>,<xsl:value-of
select="$length"/>)
		<xsl:value-of select="concat($string, substring($whitespace, 1,
$length - string-length($string)))"/>
	</xsl:template>
	
</xsl:stylesheet>