XSLT, 2nd Edition

Name

<xsl:preserve-space>

Defines the source document elements for which whitespace should be preserved.

Category

Top-level element.

Required Attribute

elements

Contains a space-separated list of source document elements for which nonsignificant whitespace should be preserved. Nonsignificant whitespace typically means text nodes that contain nothing but whitespace; whitespace that appears in and around text is always preserved. The elements attribute can also contain the value *, which means whitespace should be preserved in all elements not specified in a <xsl:strip-space> element. (Although <xsl:preserve-space elements="*"/> is legal, there’s no need to ever use this. XSLT preserves whitespace text nodes by default.) It is also valid to specify elements="po:*" to specify all elements in the po namespace.

[2.0] In XSLT 2.0, the elements attribute can use wildcards for the namespace prefix. For example, the value elements="*:title" refers to all <title> elements, regardless of their namespaces. As with XSLT 1.0, the value elements="dc:*" refers to all elements in the dc namespace.

Note

The XML spec defines the seldom used attribute xml:space. The xml:space attribute can have the values preserve or default. If xml:space="preserve" applies to a given element in the XML source, all whitespace is preserved, regardless of any <xsl:preserve-space> or <xsl:strip-space> elements.

Optional Attributes

None.

Content

None. <xsl:preserve-space> is an empty element.

Appears in

<xsl:preserve-space> is a top-level ...