Views/CCK - problem getting valid XHTML markup output

In the Views online help it states in its chapter View row styles:

The fields row style displays each field defined in the view, one after another. Each field defines its own output.

By default, each field is put in a div unless it is selected to be inline. If it is inline, it is put in a span. Two items in divs will be displayed one after another, with the second one below the first. Two items in spans will be displayed on the same line. One item in a span next to divs is the same as two items in divs. This means that for the inline setting to do anything, at least two consecutive items must be set inline.

How do I define the field as block or inline for each field, or is there a way to over ride the display in Views or through coding?

While digging though the Drupal Themer Information I found an array called options with 2 elements

inline(Ararry, 0 elements)
separator(string, 0 characters)

Is this what is setting my fields to be considered inline and wrapping them in spans and if so how do I go about changing the value so that the fields are not considered inline elements so that I can have divs instead?

OK update:

It seems that somewhere Views has set the element type as span ($field->element_type;

So now I need to find where this is happening as I have set NO fields to inline in Views and when I double check they are NOT set as inline. Never were set that way either (I only found out you could while researching this problem).

Does anyone know where I can fine the code that is responsible for setting the element type for fields???

OK just found this and it looks like the problem may not be with Views at all but with CCK!
Look at the following code from /cck/includes/views/handlers/content_handler_field.inc
Yes, this is from the latest version of CCK 6.x-2.2

  /**
   * Return DIV or SPAN based upon the field's element type.
   */
  function element_type() {
    if (isset($this->definition['element type'])) {
      return $this->definition['element type'];
    }
    // TODO Figure out exactly when to return a div or a <span>. Any field
    // that ever needs to be shown inline in Views UI. It needs to return
    // a div for textareas to prevent wrapping a <span> around a <p>.
    // Earl says we need to be sure that other fields we don't know
    // about won't end up wrapping a span around a block-level element.
    if ($this->content_field['widget']['type'] == 'text_textarea') {
      return 'div';
    }
    else {
      return 'span';
    }
  }

It would appear that unless the content type is a textarea is is being inclosed inside of a <span> the comments also would appear to support this:

    // Earl says we need to be sure that other fields we don't know
    // about won't end up wrapping a span around a block-level element.

So now I am not sure how to proceed from here does anyone know how I can change this without touching the core files for CCK?

Ok I have a solution that will work thanks to dogyboy and some others. You can read the whole thing in the CCK issue "field with multiple values, not marking itself properly as block level element for views integration?".

This will work as a fix and though I still would like to know more how the CCK assigns the element_type as it is a pain to to do that for all the views.

So that anyone coming behind will know what dogboy did and how to do it for their own site;

First copy views-view-fields.tpl.php from the Views module [views/theme/views-view-fields.tpl.php] into your theme folder.

change the name to views-view-fields--my_view_name.tpl.php and them look for the following line of code:

<<?php print $field->element_type; ?> class="field-content"><?php print $field_content; ?></<?php print $field->element_type; ?>>

Then to make it easy just highlight that line of code and copy the following code;

<?php
      // Set the fields in this view to be treated as blocks
        $my_element_type = 'div';
      ?>
      <<?php print $my_element_type; ?> class="field-content"><?php print $field->content; ?></<?php print $my_element_type; ?>>
      <!--<<?php //print $field->element_type; ?> class="field-content"><?php //print $field_content; ?></<?php //print $field->element_type; ?>>-->

You will see that I included the original line but commented it out so that at a later time, if a more eloqunet solution is found, it can be changed back easily.