XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Name

xsl:preserve-space

Synopsis

<xsl:preserve-space
   elements="QualifiedName_1 QualifiedName_2..." />

The top-level xsl:preserve-space element specifies which elements in the source document will not have whitespace stripped from them before they are transformed. Whitespace stripping removes text nodes that contain only whitespace (the space character, the tab character, the carriage return, and the line feed). By default, whitespace is preserved in an element unless its name is listed in the elements attribute of an xsl:strip-space element. This element allows you to override the list given in xsl:strip-space; if an element is listed in both xsl:strip-space and xsl:preserve-space, then its whitespace is preserved.

Attribute

elements, required

A whitespace-separated list of elements in which space should be preserved. Besides element names, the elements attribute can contain an asterisk to indicate that whitespace should be preserved in all elements. It can also contain a namespace prefix followed by a colon and an asterisk to indicate that whitespace should be preserved in all elements in the given namespace.