Comment 2 for bug 1373578

A patch for the first problem is available at the tip of the user/gmcharlt/lp1373578_dont_maketext_empty_string branch in the working/Evergreen repository:

http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=commitdiff;h=4e729cf35c4966648a7fb37cf5f19c8951d02e60