I would like to have a list sorted ignoring any initial definite/indefinite articles 'the' and 'a'. For instance:

• The Comedy of Errors
• Hamlet
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Twelfth Night
• The Winter's Tale

I think perhaps in XSLT 2.0 this could be achieved along the lines of:

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:for-each select="play"/>
    <xsl:sort select="if (starts-with(title, 'A ')) then substring(title, 2) else
                      if (starts-with(title, 'The ')) then substring(title, 4) else title"/>
    <p><xsl:value-of select="title"/></p>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

However, I want to use in-browser processing, so have to use XSLT 1.0. Is there any way to achieve this in XLST 1.0?