losing significant whitespace with normalize-space

Generating text output (an apropos file) from a docbook reference manual,
I'm not able to preserve whitespace around the inline <command> elements in
the <refpurpose> element below. 

Code snippet:

<refentry>
<refnamediv>
<refname>
<indexterm><primary>configuration records</primary></indexterm>
catcr
</refname>
<refpurpose>Displays configuration record 
created by <command>xmake</command>, <command>ymake</command>
, or <command>xaudit</command> 
</refpurpose>

The desired output is a single line, like this:

catcr                     Displays configuration record created by xmake,
ymake, or xaudit

What I'm getting is this: 

catcr                     Displays configuration record created
byxmake,ymake, orxaudit


Using normalize-space is the only way I've found to eliminate the newlines,
but then I lose the whitespace around the command elements is stripped. The
preserve-space (and strip-space) functions don't seem to have any effect,
presumably because refpurpose is not a text-only element. Here's the current
state of the stylesheet - can anybody suggest what I'm doing wrong?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
                version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="text" 
            indent="no"/>

<xsl:preserve-space elements="refpurpose"/>

<xsl:template match="/">

   <xsl:variable name="newline">
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
   </xsl:variable>
  
   <xsl:for-each select="book/reference/refentry/refnamediv">
      <xsl:apply-templates select="refname"/>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="refpurpose">
	     <xsl:with-param name="refnameLen"
select="string-length(refname/text())"/>
	     <xsl:with-param name="refnameField" select="'
'"/>
      </xsl:apply-templates>
      <xsl:value-of select="$newline"/>
   </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="refname">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="refpurpose">
   <xsl:param name="refnameField"/>
   <xsl:param name="refnameLen"/>
   <xsl:value-of select="substring($refnameField,$refnameLen)"/> <!-- Pad
with 25 spaces minus refname -->
   <xsl:apply-templates/> 
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*/text()">
   <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="indexterm"></xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="indexterm/primary"></xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="indexterm/secondary"></xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="indexterm/secondary"></xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>



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