David Carlisle wrote:
<xsl:variable name="newline" select=" ' ' " />
2nd one, not the 1st (which is equivalent to <xsl:variable
name="newline"/>
Oops!
(side note:)
I tend to solve my own whitespace problems with character maps, so that
I can use a private use character everywhere in my code. That way I do
not need to think about the whitespace removal of the stylesheet:
inside a stylesheet dtd:
<!ENTITY newline "&#x0A;" >
<!ENTITY newline_substitute "" > <!-- mapped to newline -->
<!ENTITY nsub "&newline_substitute;" > <!-- alias -->
the xslt:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet SYSTEM
"../../xslt-common/dtd/webitor-transformation.dtd" >
<xsl:stylesheet
version = "2.0"
xmlns:xsl = "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"; >
<xsl:character-map name="substitutes">
<xsl:output-character character="&newline_substitute;"
string="&newline;"/>
</xsl:character-map>
<xsl:output use-character-map="substitutes" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:value-of select=" '⊄' " />
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
In the example above there is no reason at all of course for using
&nbsub; instead of unless for readability (but you could use
&newline; too). However, when passing around variables, doing copy-of,
value-of etc, or even a normalice-space, you can loose the newlines.
This way you can preserve them more easily and, the better part, when I
place an ⊄ anywhere, it will always be output (which is not so for
)
There are other possibilities that have to do with linebreaking and
proper indentation that are otherwise hard to achieve or may get lost in
parameter passing as value-of instead of copy-of etc., but I am drifting
too far away now from the OP's question....
(I wonder if this technique is used by others, too and for what
purposes; I use similar tricks for easier handling of quote-escapes in
source documents and outputting tab characters for indentation when
normal indentation does not suffice)
-- Abel Braaksma