RE: Whitespace after <span> in <a>

Greetings,

I'm using Xalan 2.3.1 to transform xml text files into xhtml.

I use two link tags, one for local, in-site links and another for
outside links ("olink"). Each olink is given a footnote number, in
square brackets, in running text. A link, with the "name" I've given
it, is provided in end notes that point to documents outside the site.
Inline, I use a <span> to provide a handle for CSS formatting of the
"inlineNoteNumber".

The system I've built works fine, with an irritating anomaly. The
generated html document always contains a carriage return and a number
of spaces after the note number in running text. When viewed in a
browser, these show as a single space. If punctuation follows the
number, we have unsightly space that I would like to get rid of.

I've experimented with xsl:text and xsl:strip-space, but to no avail.


Example xml source:

  <olink
  url="http://www.counterbalance.net/biogloss/totistem-body.html";
  name="Totipotent Stem Cells" ref="totiDef03">Totipotent stem
  cells</olink> of human beings ...


The relevant xsl:

  <!-- olink -->
  <!-- link to eom; non-breaking space 160; insert note number -->
  <xsl:template match="olink">
    <a href="#{(_at_)ref}">
      <xsl:apply-templates />
      <span class="inlineNoteNumber">&#160;[<xsl:number level="any"
/>]</span></a>
  </xsl:template>


Resulting html:

  <a href="#totiDef03">Totipotent stem
      cells<span class="inlineNoteNumber">Â [14]</span>
                  </a> of human beings...



(The "Â" is another anomaly that I'd like to resolve; it should be
passed through as &#160; or &nbsp; that would pass validation, but
that's another issue.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

William BC Crandall
Post Office Box 187
Lagunitas, CA 94938
bc(_dot_)crandall(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)net


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