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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.

This bug is tagged as easy and appears to already have a patch and a test posted from two years ago. What is still to be done here?

I added the "needs review" keyword, to make this easy to find for reviewers, changed the version (new features don’t go in older versions; check if your patches still apply), and added MvL as nosy, since he’s listed as expert for the xml package in py3k/Misc/maintainers.rst

I believe 3.2 is still open for new features.

Updated version of the patch against current py3k svn (r83022) attached.
This is a combined patch, including the previous xml.sax.saxutil changes (including the 'short_empty_elements' keyword) and the new tests.

The patch looks clean to me, applied small edits to change it from git to svn. Changed test_sax got 7 errors on run. Changed saxutils 53 tests all passed. Can this please be committed.

Can a committer look at this please.

Patch looks good to me.

So what still needs to happen to get this in? 
Patch still applies to current python 3.2 trunk (r85564).

Committed Neil's patch (after adding docs) in r85671. Thanks.