QDomElement's text() for <element> </element> giving me a empty Qstring

[CirqueForge]

Hello. I'm confronted with a problem reading .XML files with my Qt application. When I try and read a XML file that has something like the following with an element with whitespace:

...
<ctrl value="EW45" index="3"/>
      <text index="4">
        <original>　</original>
      </text>
...

...
<ctrl value="EW45" index="3"/>
      <text index="4">
        <original>　</original>
      </text>
...

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The whitespace between "<original>　</original>" isn't preserved and the resulting Qstring is empty. Unfortunately, this creates problems as I have several of these whitespace nodes in the XML files I need to use. I read up on the issue on http://lists.trolltech.com/qt-intere...ad01101-0.html and apprently, it's a really old unfixed "bug" or feature depending on how you look at it. My question is how am I suppose to read the node correctly so I can have these whitespace nodes give me a Qstring that isn't empty?