The white space should not have been altered by the parser (except for normalization of the line breaks). From section 2.10 of the spec: "An XML processor MUST always pass all characters in a document that are not markup through to the application. A validating XML processor MUST also inform the application which of these characters constitute white space appearing in element content." >>> [log in to unmask] 2004-02-17 17:02:35 >>> When parsing a MODS document, say for display, how do I ensure that any spaces in <nonSort> are preserved? Is it kosher to set <nonSort xml:space="preserve">? This is not explicitly allowed in the schema, but seems appropriate from the XML parsing perspective. -- Tod A. Olson <[log in to unmask]> "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. Sr. Programmer / Analyst "If you weren't mad, you wouldn't have The University of Chicago Library come here," said the Cat.