Undesirable whitespace after examples

[<techno_plume-mailbox@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

I'm working with a large existing manual that has a bunch of formal
examples. The example element allows titles and easy listing in the
TOC, so this has worked well. 

Part of my tinkering included updating the files to use the Docbook XML
DTD v4.3 and more up-to-date XSL stylesheets; previously it was set up
to use version 1.55.0 of the stylesheets. Unfortunately, using XSL
stylesheets v1.71.0, the xsltproc-generated chunked HTML pages have a
big chunk of whitespace underneath text which is surrounded by an
example tag.

I'm not really familiar with XSL customizations. An example page
generated using the old stylesheets - http://tinyurl.com/2gsc8w shows
the examples integrating neatly with the text underneath. When
generated using v1.71.0 extra space displays underneath each example
(same page w/minor content updates): http://tinyurl.com/265xf6.

What specific change(s) can I make so that examples render as before,
without the extra spacing?  Plus, would those changes cause problems
for anybody building the docs using their own installed XSL stylesheets
if they're anything other than v1.7x.x?

Thank you,

Richard.

P.S. The docs have environment variables (like $KDEDIRS) in them a lot.
These were marked up as <envar>$KDEDIRS</envar>. Apparently that's
incorrect and should be <parameter>$<envar>KDEDIRS</envar></parameter>.
The parameter tag causes the chunked HTML output to be italicised,
which (IMO) is less pretty. Is there a quick fix so it does not render
the environment variable in italics?