At 09:32 AM 12/2/2002, Rafal wrote:
>Thanks to everyone who replied on and off list. Here are
>some of my comments and further doubts:
>
>1) There seems to be some consensus that MS is correct
>    and Saxon is not (quite unexpected on this list!).

I don't agree with this consensus.

I believe MSXML is stripping whitespace when it shouldn't. I believe this
to be a known bug: that MSXML strips the space when it builds it DOM,
thereby lapsing in spirit, if not in letter, from the XSL Rec, which says
all whitespace must be preserved in the source document unless
xsl:strip-space is invoked on the element. (The reason the lapse is not in
the letter is that this stripping happens in their parse, not in the
preparation of the source tree.)

Evidence to the contrary is welcome, of course. :->

As for the workarounds, they're about right. In the general case (e.g. two
consecutive elements appearing in mixed content, separated only by
whitespace) this can be more of a pain.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:[log in to unmask]
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