like <td></td>, <td/>, and <td>-some whitespace-</td>

I want an element with whitespace to do nothing and to generate an:
<fo:inline white-space-collapse="false"> </fo:inline>

I am using the following:

<xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test="normalize-space()=' ' and .!=''">
    <fo:inline white-space-collapse="false"> </fo:inline>
  <xsl:/when>
<xsl:choose>

I have a couple of problems here, I thought that normalize-space() should return a single character if any whitespace exists. It appears to return an empty string, at least with SAXON. I am not sure if it
works internally with FOP because I don't get to see the intermediate fo
file.

The bigger problem is that specifying the following on a template rule that matches an element with whitespace
<fo:inline white-space-collapse="false"> </fo:inline>

becomes

<fo:inline white-space-collapse="false"/>

rendering this solution completely useless.

I tried adding:

<xsl:preserve-space elements="fo:inline" />

>
> It doesn't appear to help.