I have a web application that uses XML fairly heavily. One advantage: I can generate XHTML output and test it with an XML parser. All goes well, until it comes to trying out the application with Internet Explorer.
Forms are displayed with the dreaded ' and friends: XML entities.
The trouble is this:
XHTML defines the textarea element as containing PCDATA, which means characters like ' and & must be escaped or an XML parser will choke. IE however will display the entities in all their glory, as if textarea contained unvarnished CDATA
So, I have two choices: I can either have well-formed XHTML or I can have the page display properly in IE. Which is to say I have no choice at all.