>     Ken>  -strip:all|none|ignorable
> 
> I can't see any justification for this in the XSLT 2.0 
> recommendation, other than the caveat of how a source 
> document is constructed is outside the remit of the 
> recommendation. 

This switch is nothing to do with the Recommendation, which says processors
can do what they like. There are three common patterns of whitespace
handling: report all whitespace text nodes, report none, and report only
those in element-only content. People come to Saxon from other products and
complain that its default is different from the one assumed by their
stylesheet code; this switch allows you to emulate what your previous
processor did so you don't have to change your code.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/