Hi, Nathaniel--
Have you looked at the ssax source code? It looks like it would be quite easy to make the change you need (though I haven't tried it). Of course, that doesn't help if you are trying to distribute an egg to the public that depends on ssax.
Also, I see from a comment in SSAX.scm that the authors are aware that the whitespace-stripping behavior is non-conformant. Personally, I think it is a poor choice on their part (or at least, as someone suggested in the discussion you referenced, it should be easy to modify that behavior), but I suppose they have their reasons.
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