using normalize-space with mixed element content

hi-

i want to remove trailing whitespace from the contents of an element
(<article-title>), but because that element sometimes contains character-level
formatting elements (<italic>) as well as text, normalize-space is creating
problems.  if i use normalize-space(), i lose the italics in the output.  (i'm
transforming to html.)

here's an example of where i want to remove whitespace (i want to remove the
space before </article-title>):

      <title-group>
        <article-title>Effect of a Brief Video Intervention on Incident
Infection among Patients Attending Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinics
</article-title>
      </title-group>

and here's the xsl code i've used:

    <xsl:template match="title-group/article-title" mode="none">
        <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>
    </xsl:template>

this code works most of the time, but in a situation like this:

<article-title>A Global Survey of Gene Regulation during Cold Acclimation in
<italic>Arabidopsis</italic> <italic>thaliana</italic></article-title>

it ends up removing the italic formatting.

does anyone know of a way to strip the whitespace that i don't want (in the
first example) while keeping the character formatting that i do want (in the
second example)?

any pointers would be greatly appreciated.


thanks-

lynn
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