[TYPO3-english] Empty p tags generated

[Chris Müller]

Hello community,

I have the problem, that in my fresh TYPO3 4.5.4 installation I got 
"empty" <p> tags before or after content elements or plugins.

This is the current state (excerpt of the generated html source):

<section>
   <p>&nbsp;</p>
   <p> </p>
   <h3 class="csc-firstHeader">The Header</h3>
   <p> </p>
   <p>&nbsp;</p>
   <p> </p>
   <p>&nbsp;</p>
   <div class="news-list-container">
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <div class="news-list-item">
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <p><span class="news-list-date">01.08.2011</span></p>
       [...]
     </div>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <div class="news-list-item">
       [...]
     </div>
     [...]
   </div>
   <p>&nbsp;</p>
   <p> </p>
   <p>&nbsp;</p>
</section>

Now it's getting weird: If I use config.disablePrefixComment=1, some of 
the <p>'s disappeared:

<section>
   <h3 class="csc-firstHeader">The Header</h3>
   <div class="news-list-container">
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <div class="news-list-item">
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <p><span class="news-list-date">01.08.2011</span></p>
       [...]
     </div>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <p>&nbsp;</p>
     <div class="news-list-item">
       [...]
     </div>
     [...]
   </div>
</section>

But the empty <p> tags in the news plugin remained. I'm having the same 
problem with the extension "multicolumn", so I think it is something 
general.

I have no clue what to do to get rid of these empty p tags. I am just 
thinking about writing a small extension, that post process the html 
code and remove those unwanted lines of code. But there must a reason 
for these empty <p> tags. Has someone has an idea?

Regards,
Chris.