Element xsl:text

This stylesheet gives the same output as the previous one. The only difference is that the text which appears in the output is surrounded by xsl:text element. The fact that the outputs are identical is a chance. In fact, when xslt processor discovers a text which is not a part of mark-up, it automatically treats it as if surrounded by xsl:text element. This implicit treatment is based on a set of rules how to handle such a case. This implicit treatment can result in an output which differs from expected behavior as rules for merging text fragments can influence the way how spaces, line breaks and tabulators (whitespaces) are outputed.

It is better strategy to always explicitly use xsl:text for creation of text nodes (outputting text). In this way only whitespaces inside xsl:text are outputed and whitespaces appearing elsewhere inside template are ignored. This small hassle connected with writing of unnecessary elements is richly awarded by convenient finalizing of required output.