RE: [xsl] character entities

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Edward,

At 10:49 AM 5/2/2005, you wrote:
> If that were true, it would be fine with me. I am not trying to output 
> character references just for the sake of doing it. I was under the 
> impression that I should try to do it because some browsers would have a 
> problem with UFT-8 encoded data. Specifically, articles such as this one 
> at A List Apart:
>
> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/emen/
>
> claim that "many more browsers choke on UTF-8 characters than do on named 
> entities." Yet you claim that there is no distinction?
>
> Is this true or isn't it?

Articles like that are quick to go stale. Browsers change all the time, and 
UTF-8 is safer now than it once was. This is a moving target. Sometimes 
there's a reason to target older browsers -- and contrary-wise, sometimes 
there's a reason to encourage your audience to use browsers that actually 
conform to relevant standards.

In any case (as I'm sure we've explained) when you're outputting HTML, 
many/most serializers will write named entities where HTML has them, if 
necessary (writing UTF-8 it shouldn't be for the reason Mike gave). So 
trying an encoding like iso-8859-1 might be an idea, if it helps you sleep 
better.

You can force numeric character references in your output for all 
"upper-ASCII" and everything else besides the first 128 characters by 
asking for encoding="US-ASCII" or some equivalent, if your processor 
supports it (Saxon does). This is sometimes useful.

Good luck,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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