> Hello Mr. Kay,
>   Please pardon me, because my opinion is different
> from yours. You have refered an Erratum section (E30).
> Its not provided in the spec
> URL(http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt). I cannot find it. Can
> you please provide the URL?

Every W3C specification provides a link to the errata in the introduction to
the spec: see the "Status of this Document" section. For XSLT 1.0 it's at
http://www.w3.org/1999/11/REC-xslt-19991116-errata/

As I said, you only really need the erratum to understand the rules in cases
when both strip-space and preserve-space are present. In simple cases you
get the same result from the original text:

For source documents, the set of whitespace-preserving element names is
specified by xsl:strip-space and xsl:preserve-space top-level elements.
These elements each have an elements attribute whose value is a
whitespace-separated list of NameTests. Initially, the set of
whitespace-preserving element names contains all element names. If an
element name matches a NameTest in an xsl:strip-space element, then it is
removed from the set of whitespace-preserving element names. If an element
name matches a NameTest in an xsl:preserve-space element, then it is added
to the set of whitespace-preserving element names.

> 
> You are saying, for the example XML -
> <pre>
>  <b>bold</b>
>  <i>italic</i>
> </pre>
> 
> The first condition is true (i.e. The element name of
> the parent of the text node is in the set of
> *whitespace-preserving element names*).
> 
> Whereas, whitespace-preserving element names *is
> specified by* xsl:strip-space and xsl:preserve-space
> elements (given in Erratum E30).
> 
> Is'nt my understanding therefore right?

I don't know what your understanding is, but in the absence of
xsl:strip-space, all these elements are whitespace-preserving and the <pre>
element therefore has 5 children.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/