How to keep span tags open

Hi all,

Is there a way to force a nsIHTMLEditor to keep a span tag open when  
this tag only contains a blank text node?

^: cursor

<span>X^</span>

After deleting the last character surrounded by the tag the cursor  
disapears and there seems to be no way of re-inserting text into the  
corresponding tag. I guess this is the case with all inline tags?

With block elements, a placeholder tags (<br type="_moz"  
_moz_dirty=""/>) is inserted automatically that keeps the  
corresponding element open.

I am currently adding the needed placeholder tags for inline elements  
by hand but this looks like an ugly hack to me. Also, span tags  
surrounded by a block element seem to require a block placeholder to  
work correctly..


Is the auto-keep-open/close behaviour documented somewhere, including  
where and when _moz_dirty tags are inserted during a transaction, or  
can anyone give a short summary of how this stuff works?

I'am running Firfox 1.5 on OSX.


Thanks!
Thomas








------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
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                         Thomas Comiotto              
[email protected]

                         Universitaet Zuerich
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