> I would try to use
> <xsl:text xml:space="preserve"> </xsl:text> That may does the trick.

Sorry, but guesswork will get you nowhere.

(a) xml:space in the stylesheet affects the treatment of whitespace in the
stylesheet, it doesn't affect whitespace in the source document

(b) whitespace within <xsl:text> is preserved by a conformant XSLT processor
anyway.

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