Tricky White Spaces being ignored

Hello,

I am translating <br/> into line breaks for an HTML textarea widget.
I have the xml source:
<MSG>
    <M>Dear <firstname/>,<br/>We would like to take this opportunity
to...</M>
    <M>Hello <firstname/>,<br/>Today is your lucky day...</M>
</MSG>

I have the following (example) template rule(s) along with the outputed
result (surrounded by ==== to show where output begins and ends:

<xsl:template match="br">&#10;&#13;</xsl:template>
====Dear Mr. Schmidt, We would like to take this opportunity to...====

<xsl:template match="br">&#10;&#13;x</xsl:template>
====Dear Mr. Schmidt,

x
xWe would like to take this opportunity to...====

<xsl:template match="br">&#10;x</xsl:template>
====Dear Mr. Schmidt,
xWe would like to take this opportunity to...====

(last example is closest to right)

NOTE:  The only way I get these &#10; or &#13; to create a line break in my
textarea is if I include a real character (character "x" above) in the
template rule.  Then it works fine.  What gives?  It is almost like the
template rule is ignored otherwise.

Karl


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list