Question

I’m transforming XML to XML and would like to indent the result automatically.
So I’m using <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
When running this through .net4 compiled transform, it works well as long as there is no text node on the output.
Once I’m adding some text <xsl:text>some text</xsl:text> the indentation of the whole xml file is gone and the result XML consists of some very long lines instead (well formed but unreadable…)

Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <Root>
      <!--xsl:text>some test</xsl:text-->
      <Test1/>
      <Test2/>
    </Root>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Root>
  <Test1 />
  <Test2 />
</Root>

Result when removing the comment from <xsl:text>some test</xsl:text>:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Root>some test<Test1 /><Test2 /></Root>

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Indenting specified with:

<xsl:output indent="yes"/>

affects only the treatment of white-space-only nodes.

Whenever you specify non-whitespace-only text nodes, you must provide for them your own indenting — yourself.