XSLT Preserve Space in Attributes

is it possible to preserve space in attribute values when passing them to a XSLT processor?

from reading specs and testing transformations myself (using Xalan/Xerces) it seems that <xsl:preserve-space>, <xml:space> and CDATA sections all apply to elements and text nodes, not to the text content of attributes.

I am retrieving Javascript code contained in an attribute in a XML document element with the Xalan XSLT processor, and the result text output does not execute. It seems to me that this is because <xsl:value-of> is converting the code to a string. When I copy and paste the code from the XML to the text document the code executes OK. However I need to be able to "grab" the code with XSLT, so is there a way to do this or do I need to tell the XML authors that the code should be in a text node rather than an attribute?

thanks in advance

lyndon