Remember, whitespace in the source document is a legitimate part of the
document!
Your stylesheet provides an explicit rule for template for the AAA/anne
nodes... but it doesn't provide a template for the root element
(match="/"), which is where processing starts. That means your
stylesheet starts by applying the built-in default templates:
<xsl:template match="*|/">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="text()|@*">
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>
So, given your input document:
<doc>
<AAA>
<anne anneId="blah" annName="blah"/>
<anne anneId="blah" annName="blah"/>
</AAA>
<BBB>
junk
</BBB>
<CCC>
junk
</CCC>
</doc>
We first match the root node as "/". The built-in template processes
this by running apply-templates against its the children.
That takes us to <doc>. It matches as "*", so we do another level of
apply-templates against the children.
The first child of <doc> is the whitespace text node between <doc> and
<AAA>. This matches as text(), and we output its value -- a newline.
The next child is <AAA>. That matches as "*", so we start applying
templates to its content.
The next child is whitespace again -- between <AAA> and <anne> -- so we
output it. That's another blank line.
And so on. Basically, because you're letting the defaults run, you're
going to get most of the text content of the source document, including
all its newlines.
The best fix is to write your own match="/" template which takes you
more directly to what you want to process. If all you care about is
those <anne> elements, I'd suggest you try adding this to override the
builtin default and take you right to the nodes you want to see:
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:apply-templates select="/AAA/anne">
</xsl:template>
By the way, note that your template for the <anne> elements can just say
match="anne". You only need to say "/AAA/anne" if you need to
distinguish these from <anne> elements that might be encountered
elsewhere in the document.
