[Bram Moolenar]
Tony Mechelynck wrote:
In languages using accented letters, the Vim spell checker doesn't recognise HTML entities (in HTML text) [...]
You'll have to check if using & and ; in the middle of a word is causing trouble. Adding them to word characters will probably create different problems.
Character entities come from the old time people were still trying to salvage the 8th bit of each byte, on communication channels, to convey byte parity. And also, whatever justification people may invent, to protect their laziness about using tools able to do more than ASCII.
One property of character entities which is apparently not so well known (or maybe that property was withdrawn since then) is that the semicolon is optional. It is only mandatory where ambiguity would otherwise arise (for example, when a letter follows, a fairly common case after all).
I presume that if software (or people) generating HTML were sparing those semicolons wherever they may be spared, a lot of other software would break, we would get a riot against people following standards :-).
-- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca
