In <486bb4f6$0$6607$9b4e6d93@n...> Martin Honnen <mahotrash@y...> writes:

> Which XSLT processor are you using?

I'm using the libxslt package in python.

> Obviously the snippet you posted can be reduced to
> <a href="{xyz}">
> </a>

Yes, I've changed to this shorthand method and it has helped.

> Are you sure the whitespace and the escaping does not result from 
> evaluating xyz and applying HTML href escaping?

I thought it might be an href escaping issue, but then I noticed the
same thing happening when I was setting a variable and then using the
value in a hidden form input element, like so:

<xsl:variable name="actionType">
	<xsl:choose>
		<xsl:when test="something">
			someValue
		</xsl:when>
		<xsl:otherwise>
			someOtherValue
		</xsl:otherwise>
	</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>

...

<form>
	<input type="hidden" name="actionType">
		<xsl:attribute name="value">
			<xsl:value-of select="$actionType" />
		</xsl:attribute>
	</input>
</form>

The value of the form element contained the embedded newline and tabs.
When I changed the hidden form element to use the shorthand {} notation
the problem still persisted; it was only fixed by editing the variable
declaration and removing all the whitespace between the beginning and
ending <xsl:when> and <xsl:otherwise> tags, like so:

<xsl:variable name="actionType">
	<xsl:choose>
		<xsl:when test="something">someValue</xsl:when>
		<xsl:otherwise>someOtherValue</xsl:otherwise>
	</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>

-- 
John Gordon                   A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs
gordon@p...              B is for Basil, assaulted by bears
                                -- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"