Bug with custom display form of Document Library?

Question

I have a document library I wish to create a custom display form for. I notice that when a person/group field is displayed in the default automatically generated list, the person is not displayed, but a large block of unsightly HTML is displayed.

Why does this occur and how can I fix this?

Below I have The automatically generated HTML within the form.

            <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
                <tr>
                    <td width="190px" valign="top" class="ms-formlabel">
                        <H3 class="ms-standardheader">
                            <nobr>Title</nobr>
                        </H3>
                    </td>
                    <td width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-formbody">
                        <xsl:value-of select="@Title"/>
                    </td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <td width="190px" valign="top" class="ms-formlabel">
                        <H3 class="ms-standardheader">
                            <nobr>Responsible for Next Step</nobr>
                        </H3>
                    </td>
                    <td width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-formbody">
                        <xsl:value-of select="@Responsible_x0020_for_x0020_Next_x0020_Step"/>
                    </td>
                </tr>

Answer 1

By "unsightly HTML" do you perhaps mean something like this?

<nobr><span><a href="/yoursite/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?ID=1">Some User</a><img border="0" height="1" width="3" src="/_layouts/images/blank.gif"/><a href='javascript:;' onclick='IMNImageOnClick(event);return false;' class='ms-imnlink'><img name='imnmark' class='ms-imnImg' title='' border='0' height='12' width='12' src='/_layouts/images/blank.gif' alt='No presence information' sip='[email protected]' id='imn_8,type=sip'/></a></span></nobr>

Well, this is definitely not a bug. Person field are actually lookup fields, and that explains why you get this piece of HTML code (if you look more closely, you'll see that it's an <a> tag).

Simply add the following attribute to the <xsl:value-of> tag:

   <xsl:value-of select="@your-field" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>