Greetings,

I'm typesetting an address book whose addresses are in XML. A typical entry has this structure:

  <family surname="">
    <address street="" housenumber="" postcode="1" city=""  telephone="" />
    <members>

      <member first_name="" initials="" maiden_name="" birthday="" email="" mobile="" /> 

      <member first_name="" initials="" birthday="" email="" mobile="" />
      <member first_name="" initials="" birthday="" />
    </members>
  </family>

initials and birthday are required, first_name can be left blank and email, mobile and maiden_name are optional.

I've written a macro (name) to compose the name, i.e. initials, first_name (maiden_name), and another macro (nameemaillink) to make the name a link associated with an email address.

% Derive an individual's name

\def\name#1%
  {\ifxmlattempty{#1}{first_name} {\xmlatt{#1}{initials}} \else {\xmlatt{#1}{initials}, \xmlatt{#1}{first_name}} \fi
   \ifxmlattempty{#1}{maiden_name} {} \else { \tfxx(\xmlatt{#1}{maiden_name})} \fi}

% Create a mailto:link that associates a individual's name with their email address.
\def\nameemaillink#1%
  {\ifxmlattempty{#1}{email} {\name{#1}} \else {\goto{\name{#1}} [url(mailto:\xmlatt{#1}{email})]} \fi}

I thought I was done when I noticed that a composed name with an empty first name, with or without an email address, is slightly indented. In the mwe Moe and Curly, without first names, are indented; while Shemp and Michael aren't.

That the undesired indentation/alignment is dependent on the presence of a first name is baffling.  After this long description, if someone would look at the code and tell me where I've gone wrong I would be very grateful. The interesting bits begin on lines 8 and 12 in xml.tex.