> <text>this is some text<SUP>3</SUP>some more</text>

> My assumption is that the embedded tags are being treated as proper nodes
> rather than literal text.

XSLT never sees any tags. In your case it sees 5 nodes

element node, name text
text node, value: this is some text
element node, name SUP
text node value 3
text node value some more

Note XSLT will see identical input on

<text   >this is some text<SUP   >3</SUP   >some more</text     >

or

<text>this&#32;is&#32;some&#32;text<SUP>3</SUP>some&#32;more</text>

so ther eis no way of determining the length taken up by the original
markup.

You can calculate the length that would be taken up by some canonical
linearisation as something like

sum of length of all text nodes
+
2 * sum of all element names
+
number of elements * 5   (for <  > in start tag and </   > in end tag)


David


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