> Can anyone recommend a flexible way to extract these notes and make them all
> one level?

That's pretty straightforward, but there's no generic solution - eg

<foo> text <bar/> text </foo>

should that become:

<foo> text  text </foo.
<bar/>

?

You need to supply the input and required output, covering the edge
cases that you can foresee, and then the solution can be tailored to
your requirements.


-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/