FYI, I'm adding some whitespace handling into XML::Rules to allow you to stop bothering with removing the whitespace around tags in a data-oriented XML or normalizing spaces on document oriented one.

Please see
XML::Rules and whitespace handling
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=654367
and
XML::Rules and whitespace handling II - DONE?
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=658971

The later includes a link to a new version of the module with the features added.

Jenda