Re: Re: HTML Problem getting entities into a textarea

Thanks, but if you try it like I suggested, you'll see the dilema - here is the problem:

I want < to show up as-is, since that is what the user typed when the document was created. If I have them double-escape (or really escape the & with &) then when I save the text, and then display it later (on a technote display page that drops the html in a table cell) it will show as < and not as <

The problem is that most tags inside the textarea tag are NOT interpreted, but the following IS:

<textarea><property key="smtpHost" value=""/></textarea>

Basically, I think that this is a bug in the textarea tag for html - any other ideas?

TIA again, Jeff

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Re: Re: Re: HTML Problem getting entities into a textarea by dws (Chancellor) on Apr 18, 2003 at 21:05 UTC
I want < to show up as-is, since that is what the user typed when the document was created. If the user literaly typed '&' 'l' 't' ';', then to prevent this from being corrupted when you spit the text back out into a textarea, you're going to need to escape the '&'. This isn't an HTML bug, though it's not the most documented aspect of HTML that you'll find.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: HTML Problem getting entities into a textarea by muad33b (Acolyte) on Apr 18, 2003 at 21:16 UTC
Know what? This problem doesn't seem to exist here in perl monks. It's the same basic idea as here. Folks are entering html in textareas. But if I put this in <property key="smtpHost" value=""/> it is saved as I typed it - with the escapes, and viewed as I want it - escapes interpreted, and is brought back up in the edit textarea with the escapes intact; uninterpreted. What am I missing here? I need so save with all &s escaped to &, and then unescape them to & when I display, but dump it when I edit, or vice versa?	[reply]