XSLT adds unwanted linebreaks

Im trying to generate HTML output with xslt and for that i use the Apache Formatting Objects Processor Version 2.3.

Each <text> element in the input file represents a line on a DIN A4 Page so the following input is a sentence that extends over 2 lines:

<text>This is a longer text where every line will be written into a span html element and somehow there will</text>
<text>be added a line break where there is none</text>

My XSLT template looks like:

<xsl:template match="text">
  <div>
    <span>
		<xsl:value-of select="."/>
	</span>
  </div>
</xsl:template>

The desired output is:

<div><span>This is a longer text where every line will be written into a span html element and somehow there will</span></div>
<div><span>be added a line break where there is none</span></div>

But what i get is:

<div><span>This is a longer text where every line will be written into a span html element and
                  somehow there will</span></div>
<div><span>be added a line break where there is none</span></div>

My css:

div {
  position: absolute;
  white-space: nowrap;
  border: 1px solid black;
}
span {
  white-space: pre;
}

As i am using css for my span styling with the property white-space: pre; this looks pretty weird in the output as the somehow there will is somewhere in between those word of the second line.

You could try (assuming an XSLT 3 processor like Saxon 9.8 or later) to use <xsl:output method="html" suppress-indentation="span"/>.

The rules for the HTML output method in XSLT (§7.3 of https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-xquery-serialization-31/) say:

> When outputting a sequence of whitespace characters in the instance of
> the data model, within an element where whitespace characters are
> treated normally (but not in elements such as pre and textarea), the
> HTML output method MAY represent it using any sequence of whitespace
> characters that will be treated in the same way by an HTML user agent.

This doesn't allow for use of custom white-space settings in the CSS. The HTML serializer is allowed to assume that it multiple whitespace characters (including newlines) are going to be rendered in the same way as a single space, except in elements such as pre and textarea. With the developments that have taken place in CSS, this assumption is clearly no longer justified.

The rules in §7.4.3 spell out more precisely what is allowed when the indent parameter takes its default value of yes; it's less clear exactly what the rules are when indent=no. And of course this is 3.1, if you're using a 1.0 processor then it's all much more vague (remember that CSS had hardly been invented when XSLT 1.0 came out).

I'm completely confused by the references in your question to XSL-FO, given that you seem to be producing HTML output. I would suggest using an XSLT 3.0 processor, and either setting indent=no, or using the suppress-indentation parameter to suppress whitespace adjustment in specific elements.