How to eliminate all and all attribute=“” by XSLT?

Question

In a xsl:stylesheet I have this \"identity like\" transform, to eliminate comments, empty (terminal) tags and empty attributes... But the second xsl:

Answer 1

An empty element is an element with no child nodes.

Template match priority is your friend ... the following should be the kind of identity stylesheet that meets your description plus what I think you are doing with image and break elements.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
                version="1.0">

<!--toss these-->
<xsl:template match="comment() | 
                    *[not(node())] |
                    @*[not(normalize-space())]"/>

<!--preserve these-->
<xsl:template match="img|br" priority="1">
  <xsl:call-template name="identity"/>
</xsl:template>

<!--preserve everything else-->
<xsl:template match="@*|node()" name="identity">
  <xsl:copy>
    <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
  </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>