I modified xml.sax.saxutils.XMLGenerator,
_xmlplus.sax.saxutils.XMLGenerator, and
_xmlplus.sax.saxutils.LexicalXMLGenerator so that they do no longer
produce those
ugly close tags for empty elements, but use the short version. So instead of
<empty></empty> you get just <empty/>.  :) 

I used the version of saxutils.py that is shipped with python 2.5.1.

patch for xml/sax/saxutils.py

patch for _xmlplus.sax.saxutils.py

Some (ugly) parsers insist on <container></
container> when the element is not declared to 
be empty, so this should be optional (the 
default being generate <container/>)

The attached patch makes this new feature optional, by passing the
"empty_element_tag" option to the constructor.

I have also added some unit tests to test the feature with the option
turned on, and off - patch attached.

Acting on a comment (with which I agree) that the "empty_elements_tag"
wasn't such an obvious name, here's a (combined) patch which uses the
name "short_empty_elements" (which was my original gut-feeling idea for
the name, before I checked the W3C standard and found that they called
them "Empty-Elements tags") instead.