Re: how to force start and end tags

Hi all,

I have the following simple XSL:

<xsl:template match="para">
     <xsl:element name="p">
         <xsl:apply-templates/>
     </xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

and appropriate templates to handle <row> and <entry>

The following XML fragment

             <row>
                    <entry>
                             <para></para>
                         </entry>
                         <entry>
                             <para></para>
                         </entry>
                         <entry>
                             <para></para>
                         </entry>
                     </row>

generates the following XHTML:

        <tr>
                     <td>
                         <p />
                     </td>
                     <td>
                         <p />
                     </td>
                     <td>
                         <p />
                     </td>
              </tr>

I am using XMLSpy. Any idea why it's writing <p/> instead of <p></p>
when the <para> element has no content? It works fine when it has content.
I understand that <p /> is valid XHTML but unfortunately IE doesn't seem
to render it correctly (the table row doesn't show). Is there a way to
force it to write <p></p> instead of just <p/>?

What do you mean by "doesn't show"?  (And do you really mean "cell doesn't
show" rather than "row doesn't show"?)

If you mean something like, "the cell borders don't show in a bordered
table when the cell has no content," then this isn't necessarily specific
just to IE.  Other browsers exhibit this behavior as well. You can generally
force them to display a border by writing   into the cell.  In
your stylesheet, you could do this if the content of the para is empty
(or perhaps better, if normalize-space() of the para content is empty).

Thnaks,
--tassos