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automatic numbering


Hello all,
           I am in the process of developing tech manuals in XML. the 
present system uses Interleaf (a UNIX-based document publishing tool) for 
authoring the manuals. We want to move to XML but at the same time  
incorporate the some of the "authoring advantages" that made certain things 
quite convenenient in Interleaf. I am struggling with the incorporation of 
one such advantage into my XML/DTD/XSL design and I would be very grateful 
of someone could suggest a way.
            The DTD and XSL models are "generic" in nature, by which I mean 
that we are trying to design a single DTD and XSL for all the manuals that 
we propose to author in XML.
             The manual is composed of text and figures.I have been able to 
capture most of the text-related structure in the DTD. For the figures, i 
have an element called <figure>. Basically it has character data (of the 
form "Figure 1"). Whenever XSL comes across this element, it hyperlinks it 
and points it to a target file (whose specs are mentioned in the attribute 
list of <figure>. So a representative <figure> element is:

<figure file="E_7564.gif">
  Figure 1
</figure>

The problem I am having is that this process/model is not very intelligent. 
For example half way through the authoring process, if someone wished to 
insert a <figure> element, she would have to change the figure numbers in 
all subsequent elements. e.g.
lets say we have 5 <figure> elements for Figures 1 to 5. And then we need to 
insert the sixth figure between Figure 2 and Figure 3. Thus the sixth figure 
will have to be numbered 3 and all the subsequebt figure numbers will 
change. Interleaf has an automated way of doing that for the user, i.e. if 
you were to insert a figure, it will re-number the other figures on its own.
Is there any way I can do that in XML? Will I need to separate the text in 
the <figure> element into two parts? i.e. if the contents of <figure> are 
"Figure 1", will I need to separate the "Figure" from "1"  and some how 
automatically generate the number?
Another complication is because of the way I am displaying the figures. As I 
mentioned, XSL hyperlinks the <figure> elements. When a user clicks on 
"Figure 1", the relevant figure (which is a gif/jpeg file)is displayed in 
separate browser window. i need to incorporate a caption at the bottom of 
the image that has the following form:
"Figure 1: Description". I have two questions related to this:
(i) As I mentioned, I am displaying the image in another browser window. 
Basically I have the following attribute associated with the ahref command: 
"target="_new". Is it possible to display a caption (that is not part of the 
image file) along with that image in the new browser window?
(ii)The caption has the following form: "Figure 1: Description". This has 
the same "numbering" problem as the <figure> element. Is there a way to 
model this?

I know that this message is a bit too long but I wanted to describe my 
problem in detail in the hope that somebody will be able to help.

Thanks a lot,
Regards,
Dhruv

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