So you have an ordered list of things you want to put into two columns via XSLT.

I've always done this a very hard way in the past using recursive stack popping logic.

Here's a super easy way to do it.

<tr>

<td width="50%" valign="top">

<xsl:apply-templates select="item[(position() mod 2) = 1] " mode="child-categories"/>

</td>

<td width="50%" valign="top">

<xsl:apply-templates select=“item[(position() mod 2) = 0] " mode="child-categories"/>

</td>

</tr>