outputting spaces in html table cells

["Ladioss Sopp" <ladioss@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I'm a novice to XSL and my question concerns the following code:

   <xsl:for-each select="listing/item">
    <xsl:sort select="title"/>
   	<tr>
 	    <td class="listing"> <xsl:value-of select="blah" /> </td>
 	    <td class="listing"> <xsl:value-of select="blah2" /> </td>
 	    <td class="listing"> <xsl:value-of select="blah3" /> </td>
       </tr>
   </xsl:for-each>

There is some code before this that generates a table.  This is all fine and 
dandy except

that if the value of "blah" is blank, and I was outputing this to html, then 
netscape would

not handle blank <td/> fields in an elegant manner because it would shift 
the next column

over one to replace the blank column.  Normally, I would insert an '&nbsp' 
between each <td>

tag so that netscape would render a space and not ignore the cell, but as 
you know, '&' is

reserved in xml.  I tried &amp;, but that doesn't render a space but rather 
the real '&'

symbol.  So my question is what is the best way to solve this problem?  I 
have searched the

list and found that perhaps I can use the disable-output-escaping="yes" 
feature/hack, but I

am using the lotus xsl processor and it doesn't quite work, so I'm assuming 
that this

feature is not available with the processor I'm using.  Any ideas?

Thanks!
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