Posts about XHTML

Pretty-printing XML with Emacs' NXML-mode

Did you ever get a stream of XML out of a log file, or in a data stream, and it's all mashed together without line-breaks so that it just appears as gobble-de-gook? If there's a data error (not an XML parsing error) then you have to read it so that you can find where the error is, but you don't have XML-spy and NetBeans is overkill or takes forever to fire up...

Emacs to the rescue! Benjamin Ferrari wrote this increadibly useful (and simple) elisp function to pretty-print a block of XML code:

Read more…

Using punctuation entity names in XHTML

This post was originally published at sinewalker.blogspot.com.au on 22 March 2006.

You can use the following XHTML entity names to put propper punctuation symbols into your web pages.


The W3C maintains a complete list, though finding what you need can be a bit tricky. I'm working on a complete list that actually displays the characters together with the other detail from W3C's table, a lot neater coding than this Blogger post too, I hope…


In the mean-time, here's a short-list of common characters that I use quite a lot:


Double quotes: “ ” ⇒ use “ and ”
Single quotes: ‘ ’ ⇒ use ‘ and ’
Ellipsis: … ⇒ use …
En-dash: – ⇒ use –
Em-dash: — ⇒ use —
Minus sign: − ⇒ use −
Multiplication: × ⇒ use ×
Division: ÷ ⇒ use ÷
Approximately equal: ≈ ⇒ use ≈
Trade Mark: ™ ⇒ use ™
Copyright: © ⇒ use ©
Registered: ® ⇒ use ®
Right-arrow: ⇒ ⇒ use ⇒