asterisks as bold or italic? (another push)

[Jelks Cabaniss]

Timothy Binder wrote:
> I hadn't realized that XML only had the five entities. That explains
> the use of decimal-encoded entities in SmartyPants. (I'm with the
> folks who miss the larger entity set. 

Here's a case when [HTML Tidy][1] can help.  Pipe the output to `tidy
--numeric-entities no`.  That will turn numeric character references into
their corresponding named equivalents (when there is one).  Tidy has [a
number of options][2] to make your markup as *you* would prefer it.

[1]: http://tidy.sourceforge.net
[2]: http://tidy.sourceforge.net/docs/quickref.html 

(Note: most people prefer to use a "config file" with Tidy rather than
specifying each and every option on the command line.  But either way
works.)


/Jelks