Hi, Nathaniel--
Unfortunately, I do not have a solution for this. However, I was curious, because I saw that Oleg stated the white-space removing behavior was deliberate. That seemed questionable to me, so I referred to the XML spec [
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml11-20060816/#sec-white-space], and read:
> An XML processor
MUST always pass
all characters in a document that are not markup through to the application.
[XML 1.0, BTW, says essentially the same thing]
Now, there is some ambiguity as to what is a "processor" and what is an "application," but I would say ssax:xml->sxml is an XML processor, in which case its behavior is non-conformant, and you would be entitled to call this issue a bug.
Sorry I have nothing more practical to contribute.