Ok, I've found it. The problem is that I have something in the xml file that produces spurios spaces, which I try to get rid of with \removeunwantedspaces. However, this seems to have an effect on the wanted \qquad. Is there a way to remove unwanted spaces inside a given element without affecting earlier spaces (in other elements) that should appear? I guess \xmlstrip could be a solution to this problem, but I don't quite understand how this works. Best, Denis %%%%%%%%%%%%% Updated Example %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \startxmlsetups xml:test \xmlsetsetup{#1}{*}{-} \xmlsetsetup{#1}{index|index-entry|num}{xml:*} \stopxmlsetups \xmlregisterdocumentsetup{test}{xml:test} \startxmlsetups xml:index \xmlflush{#1} \stopxmlsetups \startxmlsetups xml:index-entry \startparagraph \xmlfilter{#1}{/term/command(xml:term)}\qquad\qquad\qquad\xmlfilter{#1}{/loc/command(xml:loc)} \stopparagraph \stopxmlsetups \startxmlsetups xml:term \xmlflush{#1} \stopxmlsetups \startxmlsetups xml:loc \removeunwantedspaces \xmlflush{#1} \stopxmlsetups \startxmlsetups xml:num \xmlflush{#1} \stopxmlsetups \startbuffer[test] <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <index> <index-entry> <term>asdf</term> <loc> <num>1</num> </loc> </index-entry> </index> \stopbuffer \starttext \xmlprocessbuffer{test}{test}{} \stoptext