Re: Eliminating leading zeros

any chance you are using xslt2? in which case

select="replace(.,'^ *0*','')

would remove any leading spaces or zeros.

otherwise something tiresome like
<xsl:variable name="x" select="normalize-space(.)"/>
<xsl:choose>
 <xsl:when test="contains($x,' ')">
   <xsl:variable name="n" select="substring-before($x,' ')"/>
   <xsl:variable name="t" select="substring-after($x,' ')"/>
   <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="number($n)=number($n)">
      <xsl:value-of select="number($n)"/>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:value-of select="$n"/>
    </>
  </>
 <xsl:text> </xsl:text>
 <xsl:value-of select="$t"/>
</>
<xsl:otherwise>
   <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="number($x)=number($x)">
...