blank lines when trying to generate custom titlepage with xsltproc

Hi all,
  I'm trying to generate a custom title from an xml file.  I've
followed the guides at:
http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/HTMLTitlePage.html
http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/TitlePageNewElems.html

http://www.dpawson.co.uk/docbook/styling/custom.html#TitlepageContent
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/docbook/styling/titlepage.html

Copying and pasting the examples doesn't work. I always get

<?xml version="1.0"?>
followed by a bunch of blank lines;  newlines with nothing following
to be exact.

I followed the directions at:
http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/TitlePageNewElems.html
exactly using the local files as-is.
template/titlepage.xsl
fo/mytitlepage.spec.xml

Using different .xml input files I get different numbers of blank
lines but no text.

Ideas?
Any help is appreciated.
thanks,
Matt