Question

(1) Why does Option1 (Template) produce whitespace (mainly btw rec1 & 5) whereas Option2 (ForEach) doesn’t?
(2) If possible, how do I code Option1 to remove the resulting whitespace?
Assumptions: use of XSLT v1., XMLPad/Stylus for testing, MSXML4.
Working on processing larger, more complex XML input files (mix of elements/attributes) with multiple ‘type’ selection criteria to create multiple TSV output files. A number of references seem to indicate using Templates as the preferable method. Using match currently pushes too much whitespace to the message queue.

XML:

<main>
    <event>
        <event_type>Bike</event_type>
        <date>2012-02-05</date>
    </event>
    <event>
        <event_type>Run</event_type>
        <date>2012-02-06</date>
    </event>
    <event>
        <event_type>Swim</event_type>
        <date>2012-02-07</date>
    </event>
    <event>
        <event_type>Run</event_type>
        <date>2012-02-08</date>
    </event>
    <event>
        <event_type>Bike</event_type>
        <date>2012-02-09</date>
    </event>
</main>

XSL:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="text"/>
  <xsl:variable name="tab" select="'&#09;'" />

<xsl:template match="@*|text()"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:text/>event<xsl:value-of select="$tab"/>
<xsl:text/>date<xsl:value-of select="$tab"/>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

<!-- OPTION1 -->
<xsl:template match="event[event_type='Bike']"><xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="event_type"/><xsl:value-of select="$tab"/>
<xsl:value-of select="date"/>
</xsl:template>

<!-- OPTION2 -->
<!--<xsl:template match="@*|node()">
<xsl:for-each select="event[event_type='Bike']"><xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="event_type"/><xsl:value-of select="$tab"/>
<xsl:value-of select="date"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>-->

</xsl:stylesheet>

Output – Opt1 Template (can’t post pics yet, … are whitespace)

event…date……
Bike….2012-02-05…………
Bike….2012-02-09.

Output – Opt2 ForEach

event…date…..
Bike….2012-02-05
Bike….2012-02-09

Answer 1

I’ve tried a different editor (Architag XRay Xml Editor, which uses MSXML) and to make it work I had to use CR/LF characters. I believe Dimitre’s answer is right.
This is my modification:

<!-- OPTION1 -->
<xsl:template match="event[event_type='Bike']">
<xsl:text>&#13;&#10;</xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="event_type"/><xsl:value-of select="$tab"/>
<xsl:value-of select="date"/>
</xsl:template>