This is easily done in XSLT. This transformation will take your input document and produce it. I slightly modified the input document so I could verify it was working correctly. It assume 1 thing however. There will never exist a book node that has both a "desc" node and a "see" node. this is will happen you'll have to adjust the logic for it to work correctly.
Input Document
<books>
<book id="12345">
<title>A<caps>New Voyage 1</caps>:Africa</title>
<desc>abcdefgh ijklmnop</desc>
</book>
<book id="12346">
<title>A<caps>New Voyage 2</caps></title>
<see id="12345">ANV</see>
</book>
</books>
XSLT
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output indent="yes" method="html"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<table>
<xsl:apply-templates select="books"/>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="books">
<xsl:apply-templates select="book"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="book">
<tr>
<xsl:apply-templates select="title"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="desc"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="see"/>
</tr>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="title" >
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="." />
</td>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="desc">
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</td>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="see">
<xsl:variable name="getid" select="@id"/>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="//book[@id = $getid]/desc"/>
</td>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output in HTML
<html>
<body>
<table>
<tr>
<td>ANew Voyage 1:Africa</td>
<td>abcdefgh ijklmnop</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ANew Voyage 2</td>
<td>abcdefgh ijklmnop</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
