There is white space before the "first" element, between the "first" and the
"last" element and after the "last" element, I would expect that to be
output as well with<xsl:value-of select="author"/>.

...only if the default stripping of whitespace only nodes was changed
to preserve - right?

	Martin Honnen
	http://msmvps.com/blogs/martin_honnen/