Despite the subject line, this question is about XSLT in general,
not just Xalan! In some quick tests Paul Dick just ran, we found
that Xalan agrees with Saxon and XT about this. As others have
pointed out, this is really a Netscape issue. XSLT processors
should realize that they are putting out an empty tag, and they
should account for XML/XHTML vs. HTML output, but the transform
language does not grant control over precise details of the
serialization-to-file of an empty tag.

We also need a clear statement from Eddy Medina about what method
he specified in xsl:output. In our tests, we saw the specified
behavior for both xml and html methods. Any form of empty <br>
element, such as <br></br> gets output as <br/> when the method
is xml, and <br> when it's html. The space inside the tag isn't
supposed to matter.

If you really need to placate Netscape, how about
<xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="'&lt;br />'"/>
This is the circumvention of output standards that is much
maligned on this list. I must invoke the usual caveat that the
above technique should only be used when there is no other way.
................David Marston


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