Allowing br/ tags to show using XSL

Question

I have a XML document that has multiple comment elements that look something like this:
<GstBk:Comments>Line1
Line2
Line3
Line4
Line5
Line6</GstBk:Comments>
But when I try to use the following code:
<xsl:value-of select="GstBk:Comments" />
or
<xsl:apply-templates select="GstBk:Comments" />
All I get is:
Line1
Line2
Line3
Line4
Line5
Line6
with no
tags. Does anyone have any ideas how I can display the comments with the break formatting?
Thanks

Answer 1

I thought it was a simple question but now I'm totally lost. Who or what is generating this XML? You, through a text editor or an XML editor? Or the servlet? Or somebody or something else? Or perhaps the servlet is the thing transforming the XML to HTML (more likely)? And when you "view" the XML and the resulting HTML are you using a browser or a text editor?
Let me just give you a couple of pieces of information, since your problem is now totally beyond me. You may already know these things, but I find a lot of people get messed up with them when working with XML and HTML.
If your HTML contains the following text: abc<BR>def
then your browser display will look like this:
abc
def
However, if your HTML contains this: abc&lt;BR&gt;def
then your browser display will look like this:
abc<BR>def
Now, if your XML contains this:
<GstBk:Comments>Line1
Line2
</GstBk:Comments>
then you have what is known as "mixed content", which means a mixture of text and elements. You have two text nodes and you have a BR element.
But if your XML contains this:
<GstBk:Comments>Line1
&lt;BR/&gt;Line2
</GstBk:Comments>
then your GstBk:Comments element only contains a single text node.
Hope this helps you to figure out what's going on.