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


======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================