> Do these chars have a special characteristic I
> don't know ?

yes, depending on how you enter them (as character data or  
character refs, they may (or may not) be subject to white space
normalisation  by the xml parser before XSL gets its hands on your
string.

the rules for white space normalisation in xml aren't quite so arcane as
the sgml rules, but they are still too much to contemplate before I've
had some more coffee.

David


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