Well, one can use an OOP-interface, like so:

  my $thing = "<htmlishness>"; # $thing is tied
  my $obj = tied($thing);
 
  $obj->raw() # or some such accessor
[download]

It's an experimental idea, so you can make sure you don't emit any un-encoded variables. Kind of like automatic taint-checking and encoding.

I figured "what the heck" and uploaded a quick test to CPAN as Tie::HTML::Entities. Needs work, I'm sure.