[thelist] Character Entity Set Question

[aardvark]

> From: "Pat Meeks" <pmeeks at email.msn.com>
[...] 
> I get the impression from the W3C page, that if there is a character
> entity specified, then it's ok to use it, you don't have to use
> numeric entity (it seems contrary to Peter's article). I want the
> browsers to display my pages properly, so is one method preferred over
> the other?

this is correct, you can use the named entity over the numeric 
entity and still be correct... and it's easier to parse those out in the 
code when you're scanning through it, too...

the reason to used numeric over named, however, is because 
some older browsers don't display the named entities properly 
because they don't know them...

which versions you ask?  dunno off the top of my head (i think NN2 
and NN3 don't, but i'm at home where i no longer have a browser 
testing suite installed)...