HTML Encoding BooHoo...

[Morbus Iff <morbus@disobey.com>]

Ok. I'd like some direction from the community:

  Is there any *singular* way (ie. across all versions of
  RSS/scriptingNews) that one should accept/encode HTML?

This comes because of the following which happened today:

  In "The XML Cover Pages" RSS feed, there's a <XML>
  bit in the title of one of his items. No big deal, at
  face value, that's the correct way to do it.

In some other places, however, where HTML is valid, you have things like:

  Hey! <b>This is neat!</b>

Now, in AmphetaDesk, if I see code like the "This is neat" above, I revert 
the entities to the HTML state, so that they'll be properly displayed to 
the browser:

  Hey! <b>This is neat!</b>

At this point in time, I *do not* want to get into a discussion of the 
morality of HTML in RSS feeds and how the world is going to end. My point 
of view is that I flipping hate HTML in RSS feeds, but I've got to cope, 
just like everyone else. Moving on...

The same "reversion of entities" affects the &lt;XML&gt; as well, making it 
<XML> as the final code to be sent for browser display. This, as some can 
guess, causes problems. Specifically, in IE 6b for Windows, it stops the 
browser display cold - IE thinks an XML document is on its way.

Now, the "reversion of entities" code in my RSS reader doesn't know about 
HTML - it just blindly reverts &lt; to < and so forth. Is the only solution 
to my problem to make the code understand all the possible HTML entities? 
Or is there something else?

Blah. Thanks for listening.


Morbus Iff
.sig on other machine.
http://www.disobey.com/
http://www.gamegrene.com/