XSLT 2.0 clarifies the intent:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#stylesheet-stripping

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Buchcik, Kasimier [mailto:k.buchcik@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 13 April 2006 18:45
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Whitespace stripping in conjunction with PIs 
> and comments
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Is the whitespace-stripping process, as described in [1], intended to
> be applied before or after the processing-instruction nodes and
> comment nodes inside a stylesheet's tree are "ignored"?
> 
> Example:
> 
> <?xml version='1.0'?>
> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
> xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
>   <xsl:output indent="yes"/>
>   <xsl:template match="/">
>     <foo>
>       <bar> <?zoo x ?>1<?zoo x ?> </bar>
>       <bar> <!-- zoo -->2<!-- zoo --> </bar>
>       <boo><xsl:text> <!-- zoo -->3<?zoo x ?> </xsl:text></boo>
>     </foo>
>   </xsl:template>
> </xsl:stylesheet>
> 
> Should the result be this...
> <foo>
>   <bar> 1 </bar>
>   <bar> 2 </bar>
>   <boo> 3 </boo>
> </foo>
> 
> or this...
> <foo>
>   <bar>1</bar>
>   <bar>2</bar>
>   <boo> 3 </boo>
> </foo>
> 
> or something different?
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#strip
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Kasimier