Missing semicolon after &#xA0 - after MSXML XSLT tranformation to HTML

EDN Admin · Mar 3, 2011

Im transforming XML to HTML. I have a loop in the XSLT that creates line indentations in the HTML by reading an integer value from an element attribute which indicates how many non-breaking spaces to insert into that line. Here is the loop:

<div style="color:Black;background-color:White; <pre>
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; xsl<span style="color:Blue; :
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; xsl<span style="color:Blue; :
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; xsl<span style="color:Blue; :
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; xsl<span style="color:Blue; :
 
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; xsl<span style="color:Blue; :<span style="color:#A31515; call-template 
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; xsl<span style="color:Blue; :<span style="color:#A31515; with-param <span style="color:Red; name<span style="color:Blue; =<span style="color:Black; "<span style="color:Blue; count
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; xsl<span style="color:Blue; :<span style="color:#A31515; with-param <span style="color:Red; name<span style="color:Blue; =<span style="color:Black; "<span style="color:Blue; indent



[/code]

The loop will generate something like this in the HTML:

<div style="color:Black;background-color:White; <pre>
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; td <span style="color:Red; width<span style="color:Blue; =<span style="color:Blue; "615" <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  (B)are accessible on an Internet website 

[/code]
We process tens of hundreds of HTML renditions from our source XML in this manner.
In the last two months we have come across a tiny smattering of HTML renditions (five so far) where one of the non-breaking space entities (&#xA0

in a series will be missing its semicolon. Firefox is forgiving and seems to add the missing semicolon
for you. IE not so much. The end result being that &#xA0 shows up in the browser as text.
This is what well end up with:

<div style="color:Black;background-color:White; <pre>
<span style="color:Blue; <<span style="color:#A31515; td <span style="color:Red; width<span style="color:Blue; =<span style="color:Blue; "615" <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  &#xA0<span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  <span style="color:Red;  (B)are accessible on an Internet website 
[/code]

The third   in the series does not have the semicolon and thus shows up as text instead of white space.
I havent had any luck finding a similar situation on The Google. The occurrence appears to be random. The vast majority of our docs are fine and the vast majority of the sequences of non-breaking spaces are fine.
Could this be a bug in MSXML?
Any advice or insight would be appreciated. Using Visual Studio 2008 & .net framework v3.5

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Missing semicolon after &#xA0 - after MSXML XSLT tranformation to HTML

EDN Admin

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