I am using an open source HTML editor in an ASP.NET project to permit the 
users to create templates for form letters.  When the user chooses to save 
the current template, I parse the HTML to create the XSL for populating the 
letters and I write both the HTML and XSL to the database.  Among the things 
the user can do is incorporate a table in the form letter, inserting both 
text and data in the table.  To maintain borders around those cells that are 
intentionally left empty in design mode, I replace the "<td> </td>" HTML 
string with "<td><xsl:text 
disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[ ]]></xsl:text></td>" since XSL 
doesn't seem to like "&nbsp".

The above works like a charm as long as there is data for all fields within 
the table; if data for one field is missing, the border for that cell doesn't 
match the borders of all the other cells in the table.  So my question is 
this: how can I go about using data in the cell if any is available or 
replacing it with the disable-output-escaping statement as shown above?  I 
thought there might be a way of incorporating xsl:if along with xsl:value-of, 
but I honestly don't know.  Anyway...

A portion of the XML I'm reading is as follows:
<entity>
    <ProviderID>12345</ProviderID>
    <ProviderName>Butcher Burns, MD</ProviderName>
    <ClaimNumber>1Z3ED0999</ClaimNumber>
    <DateOfService>12/01/2005</DateOfService>
</entity>
<entity>
    <ProviderID>12346</ProviderID>
    <ProviderName>Blades Messina, MD</ProviderName>
    <ClaimNumber>1Z3EF0000</ClaimNumber>
    <DateOfService></DateOfService>
</entity>

A portion of the currently-existing XSL is listed below.  The entire table 
containing the following snippet is inside an xsl:for-each loop.
<tr>
   <td align="right">Claim Number:</td>
   <td><xsl:value-of select="ClaimNumber" /></td>
   <td align="right">Date of Service:</td>
   <td><xsl:value-of select="DateOfService" /></td>
</tr>

In this case, I want the fourth cell to contain the Date of Service the 
first time through the loop since the data is provided for that iteration.  
On the second iteration, the fourth cell needs to contain "<td><xsl:text 
disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[ ]]></xsl:text></td>" since Date of 
Service data isn't provided for it.


-- 
Things are more like they are now than they ever have been before.