1. I am not positive that the “new” is required. I thought it was at the time, but I could be wrong.
2. Yes, the first parameter is a way of telling the XSL processor to use the “lastIndexOf” on that string instance. So, I’m suspecting that the “new” was used to create the instance to be used. But again, not sure if it’s required, you could try it by just passing the raw XSL “substring” and see what happens.

Keep in mind that if you use XSL 2.0, there are a LOT of new features, and I’m betting you could do this easily, without a need to call a specific language, such as Java. Xalan doesn’t support 2.0, but saxon does. The coolest thing about XSL 2.0, is you can make native “functions” where you don’t have to apply a template, but it’s actually like any other XSL function call, such as “substring”. I could work up an example if I remember when I’m at work. I’ve done some XSL 2.0 stuff at work.

I’ve been working with Stylus Studio here and using External functions and have a similar requirement due to some overflow of text using Apache FOP. Stylus Studio runs your example perfectly IF I change the processor to XALAN-J rather than their built in. Otherwise, it can’t seem to find these functions, even though I would think they’d be “registered” by default.

The only change I had over your function was that there might not be a space in the input text, so it MUST wrap at 35 characters, regardless.