A beef with XSLT Sometimes too complicated

Ok,
So I love XSLT, 100% but I do have this beef, some syntax is too complicated!
Classic example, setting a variable:

<xsl:variable name="bg_img">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="normalize-space($all_vars)=''">
<xsl:text>background_bright</xsl:text>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:text>background_faded</xsl:text>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>

Is there a cleaner / simpler way to do this?  Any chance you can do
this in one line?