Re: [xsl] White space strategies for mixed content

["Peter Flynn peter@xxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/11/2019 01:00, Rick Quatro rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have inherited some "interesting" xml that has mixed content and I am 
> trying to figure out some strategies for getting "cleaner" output in my 
> XSLT workflow without removing any needed whitespace.

This is a very common problem in handling document XML with significant 
amounts of mixed content, especially with nested subelements. It's made 
unnecessarily harder by the dropping of white-space-only nodes (we 
should have paid more attention to this at the time).

Michael has explained the dropping of insignificant white-space. I don't 
need that because I'm typically outputting to LaTeX which does that by 
itself, but I do need the reverse: to reinsert the deleted 
white-space-only nodes which fall between subelements, eg

...use <tag>foo</tag>, <emph>never</emph> <tag>bar</tag>...

To avoid this, in the template for each element which may occur in mixed 
content, you could first call a short named template which tests if the 
immediately-preceding node has a name which is not 'text', and in that 
case, insert a single space character.

Peter