XSLT operates on the tree view of the parsed text, it has no access to the
original tags. There's no way of producing different results for the two
equivalent input files:

<a foo="bar">xyz<br/>pqr</a> 

<a      foo = 'bar'>xyz<br></br><![CDATA[pqr]]></a>

which is what you seem to be trying to do.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Darren Wheatley [mailto:darren@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 01 August 2007 13:14
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [xsl] Length of a literal string containing embedded tags
> 
> Hi,
>  
> Could anyone tell me how I can calculate the length of a 
> string containing inline elements?
>  
> E.g.
>  
> With a context node like this:
>  
> <text>this is some text<SUP>3</SUP>some more</text>
>  
> "string-length(.)" should return 43, but it returns less than that.
>  
> My assumption is that the embedded tags are being treated as 
> proper nodes rather than literal text.
>  
> Any idea how I can make sure that each character of the 
> embedded tags counts as a character when calculating the 
> length of the overall string?
>  
> E.g.   <SUP> would count as 5 characters
>  
> Thanks
> 
> D.