David,

Thank you very much. You were right, the spaces are caused by

  <xsl:output method="xml"
              [...]
              indent="yes"
              xalan:indent-amount="2"/>

Changing this "yes" to "no" keeps xalan from introducing the spaces.

I took the opportunity to up date my versions of both xalan and ant.
Unfortunately, the extra spaces are put in with these versions as well.
I believe this is a bug in xalan.

Thanks too for the clarification on the "Â".

All the best,

William BC Crandall
Post Office Box 187
Lagunitas, CA 94938
bc.crandall@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list