RE: Empty Elements

> Which is basically the same as <AAA></AAA>, but is
> there a way i can preserve the <AAA></AAA> format
> instead of the <AAA/> format in thr output?
> 

No.

(a) the XSLT processor doesn't know which variant was used in the input,
because both are reported by the XML parser in the same way

(b) the serialization options don't give you any control over how an empty
element is serialized, because the specs say that the two forms are
precisely equivalent (so you're not supposed to care).

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/