Re: [docbook-apps] how to output HTML entities?

[Michael Smith <smith at xml-doc dot org>]

Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org> writes:

> I want <computeroutput> inside <programlisting> to be preceded with a
> double right arrow (XHTML &rArr;) and a space for the first such element
> and 3 spaces for all following elements.

[...]

Don't use ISO (HTML) named character entities. They are a relic.

Either author in UTF-8 and enter the Unicode characters directly,
or use numeric character entities -- in this case, &#8658; or &#x21D2;

There's an online tool you can use to look up numeric values for
named characters, and vice versa:

  http://www.saila.com/usage/tips/examples/special_characters.html

Better yet, if you're using Emacs, you can try Norm's "XML
Unicode" package -

  http://norman.walsh.name/2003/10/03/xmlunicode
  http://nwalsh.com/emacs/xmlchars/

It gives you several ways to enter special characters -

  - choose the character you want from a menu

  - choose by the full Unicode name (e.g., "RIGHTWARDS DOUBLE
    ARROW"), with completion

  - choose by the ISO (HTML) named-character entity name (e.g.,
    rArr), with completion; or with (set-input-method 'xml), type
    in the ISO (HTML) named-character entity name and it gets
    automatically converted to the real Unicode character (if
    your Emacs can find the glyph for it; otherwise, it gets
    converted to a numeric entity)

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