XSL to completely remove comments (Including the s

Question

I have a number of xml files that should follow this format:

<root>
<question>What is the answer?</question>
<answer choice="A">Some</answer>
<answer choice="B">Answer</answer>
<answer choice="C">Text</answer>
</root>

But it comes in from a web interface (I cannot control the output) with Comments and ends up looking like this:

<root>
<question>What is the answer?</question>
<answer choice="A"><!--some comment
-->
Some
</answer choice="B">
<answer>

<!--some comment
     -->
    Answer
    </answer>
    <answer choice="C"><!--another comment
    -->
   Text</answer>
   </root>

The output - after removing the comments ends up like this:

What is the answer?
A\t


Some
B\t
Answer
C\t     
Text

Now, I have an xsl sheet set up to strip out comments using:

<xsl:template match="comment()"/>

and some other Identity template applications.

I would use normalize-space(), but it removes the newlines that I do want from the answer text. What I am looking for is a way to remove only "blank" or preceding and ending "extra" newlines. Is there a good way to do this?

Also note: The final output is Adobe Indesign, which uses XSLT 1.0.

[Edit - the XSL is below].

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">

<xsl:strip-space elements="*" />

<xsl:template match = "@*|node()|processing-instruction()" name="identity">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()|processing-instruction()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="comment()"/>

<xsl:template match="//answer"><xsl:value-of select="@choice"/>
<xsl:text>&#09;</xsl:text><xsl:call-template name="identity"/>
</xsl:template> 

<xsl:template match="//question">
<xsl:text>00&#09;</xsl:text><xsl:call-template name="identity"/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Answer 1

This stylesheet:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
    <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
    <xsl:strip-space elements="*" />
    <xsl:template match="@*|node()" name="identity">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="comment()"/>
    <xsl:template match="@choice">
        <xsl:value-of select="concat(.,'&#x9;')"/>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="question|answer">
        <xsl:call-template name="identity"/>
        <xsl:text>&#xA;</xsl:text>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Output:

<root><question>What is the answer?</question>
<answer>A   Some</answer>
<answer>B   Answer</answer>
<answer>C   Text</answer>
</root>