I finally figure it out using a combination of xsl:choose, xsl:when and 
xsl:otherwise in conjunction with the xsl:value-of statements.  Thanks again 
for your suggestion on replacing the CDATA string with &160, Neil; it makes 
for much cleaner code.
-- 
Things are more like they are now than they ever have been before.


"AlBruAn" wrote:

> 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 " ".
> 
> 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.