I've not been able to find any XML parsers out there that preserve whitespace between XML attributes. A Google search for "whitespace between attributes" comes up with people looking but not finding. Why would one ever want to preserve whitespace between attributes? Well, the most obvious reason is if you want to modify an XML document without messing with line-based difference algorithms too much; if the original document has line feeds between attribute values and you want to use a DOM to modify that document, it's going to look a lot different after you save it.

I really do understand why it doesn't exist; not that many people care, but they do want fast XML parsers, and worrying about this sort of thing certainly wouldn't speed them up any. Seems like they could at least provide an option, though...