I think it is better to translate them to character references. The entities can't be represented accurately other than with Unicode. The HTML entity resolver would need to produce UTF-8 strings.

This assumes that the HTMl to XML process is converting escaped text to escaped text. If the text is being unescaped for other reasons, then the entities should be expanded to UTF-8 and escaped on output.

In reply to Re^2: Converting HTML special entities to XML by iburrell
in thread Converting HTML special entities to XML by drhender

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