> How does one find all text elements that are descendants of the first
> para element but exclude any text element that is a descendant of the
> second system element?   

It's easier if you give explict examples of what you want to generate as
the answer to that question depends on what you mean by "find".

If you mean to select those nodes with XPath to form a node set which
you can then manipulate as individual nodes, then that's possible
(although possibly inefficient) in Xpath (easier in xpath2 than 1)
but if you just want to output the text (or make a variable with all teh
found text, concatenated) then it'smuch easier

<xsl:apply-templates mode="zzz"/>

gets all the text below the current node (as there are no templates in
zzzmode and that's what the default templates do) so to prune at any
descendent system element you just need one extra template

<xsl:template match="system" mode="zzz"/>

David

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