I am running your test and logging the characters(). Here is the output: | 1292 DEBUG [SaxJBossXBParser] Using parser: org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl@12d7a10, isNamespaceAware: true, isValidating: true, isXIncludeAware: true | 1412 DEBUG [SaxJBossXBParser] characters: ' | ' | 1432 DEBUG [SaxJBossXBParser] characters: ' ' | 1432 DEBUG [IgnorableWhitespaceUnitTestCase] Add org.jboss.test.xml.IgnorableWhitespaceUnitTestCase$Top@161f10f null | 1432 DEBUG [SaxJBossXBParser] characters: ' | ' How can we make a difference between the ignorable and non-ignorable? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4052452#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...