Prevent empty a tags being converted

Using HTML Import 2.5 –

I’m importing RoboHelp files into WP. The pages have plenty of tags with the structure <a id="foo" name="foo"></a> to set up internal bookmarks.

When I import the pages with HTML Import, these empty tags are converted to self-closing, such as

<a id="foo" name="foo" />

This leads to the page being rendered like all of the text on it is in an <a> tag, hence it’s blue and the cursor turns to a pointer.

However, when I switch from the text editor to the visual editor, it fixes the problem, closing all empty tags to the original format. The page renders correctly.

Is there a way turn off in HTML Import whatever is converting those empty tags into self-closing to begin with? I tried importing with the Clean up bad ( Word, Frontpage ) HTML option both on and off – no difference. Anyway, I definitely need it on for other issues with the pages.

I also tried commenting out line 227

$string = preg_replace( "/<[^\/>]*>( [\s]? )*<\/[^>]*>/", ' ', $string );

to get it to ignore empty tags, but there was no effect. I need to keep those empty tags anyway.

Thanks for your help and for the incredibly useful plugin!

https://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/import-html-pages/