How to select all nodes of an XML Docbook except one?

Question

I'm a beginner in XSL and I'm trying to transform a Docbook document into an HTML one but I have a little problem.

I would like to select all the content of simplesect nodes included in a section but I would like to exclude the title of the first one.

The XML code is as follows:

<section xml:id="sectionid">
    <title>Section title</title>
    <simplesect>
        <title>Title 1</title>
        <para>My first text</para>
    </simplesect>
    <simplesect>
        <title>Title 2</title>
        <para>My second text</para>
    </simplesect>
    <simplesect>
        <title>Title 3</title>
        <para>My third text</para>
    </simplesect>
</section>

The goal is to obtain this:

<h3>Section title</h3>

<p>My first text</p>

<h4>Title 2</h4>
<p>My second text</p>

<h4>Title 3</h4>
<p>My third text</p>

I have tried some things like these, included in an XSL stylesheet:

<xsl:template match="db:simplesect[position()>1]/db:title">
    <h4><xsl:value-of select="text()" /></h4>
</xsl:template>

Associated with this to remove the title text from the output:

<xsl:template match="db:simplesect">
     <xsl:apply-templates select="* except db:title" />
</xsl:template>

I have tried this too:

<xsl:template match="db:section/db:simplesect">
    <h4><xsl:value-of select="db:title[not(parent::db:simplesect[position()=1])]" /></h4>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="* except db:title" />
</xsl:template>

All of those failed.

I think I made mistakes in my xpath's requests and in the conditions/predicates in patterns. Could you help me to find the right patterns?

Answer 1

I would think that blocking that particular title from being processed with an empty template e.g. <xsl:template match="simplesect[1]/title"/> (use a prefix if needed e.g. <xsl:template match="db:simplesect[1]/db:title"/>) is the easiest approach, together with templates that transform the rest to HTML e.g. <xsl:template match="simplesect/title"><h4><xsl:apply-templates/></h4></xsl:template>.