Is xsl:apply-templates exactly the same as function calls ?

Is xsl:apply-templates exactly the same as function calls ?
I mean can we use xsl:apply-templates in a tamplate which is
itself referred by another template using xsl:apply-templates...
please note that i'm using XT, does it support such hierarchy ?
and does anybody know about any program that can form a
a single, standard html table from the input XML document ?
i mean that program may have a built-in generic style sheet for
this transformation.....
thanx in advance for any suggessions, help...
Asim Zafar

Give the template you want to call within the other template a name attrib and then use xsl:call-template. eg:-
<xsl:template match="record">
<tr>
<xsl:call-template name="Contents"/>
</tr>
</xsl:template>
I dunno about your other thing - sounds like you should make an xsl doc to handle that for you...
Brendan.

thanx for your reply,
actually my questions is for hierarcial calls, what i mean here is that in the example you've given i.e
<xsl:template match="record">
<tr>
<xsl:call-template name="Contents"/>
</tr>
</xsl:template>
here "Contents" is a template, can we call another template say "Third" from our "Contents" template and so on... as we do in function calls, like a called function can call other functions and so on.. can we do it in templates ?

Yes, you can call a template from within another 'called' template similar to functions or stored procedure calls in conventional programming. This is how you use recursion to process a node-set.

but does [XT] support this
XT is not giving any errors but its also not showing the output of third level template, any suggessions, tips ?