Why is the ISO-8859-1 character code not working properly for ö?

[honestrosewater]

In another thread, someone was trying to use the ISO-8859-1 character code for ö and forgot the semicolon. They wrote

&#246

and when I quoted them to point out the omission, the character magically appeared. When input from the text box, &#246 appears in the html as

& amp;#246

(no space) as expected. But when editing or quoting, it appears as ö. What is happening?!

 

[wave]

What is happening?!

The ampersand symbol got converted into its ASCII equivalent in HTML.

 

[honestrosewater]

The ampersand symbol got converted into its ASCII equivalent in HTML.

PF's html says it uses ISO-8859-1 not ASCII. I understand why & appears as & amp; in the html. But why does & amp;#246 appear as ö when entered the second time, presumably from the html? Does something add the semicolon to the end?

 

[wave]

PF's html says it uses ISO-8859-1 not ASCII.

ISO-8859-1 is a superset of US-ASCII.

But why does & amp;#246 appear as ö when entered the second time, presumably from the html? Does something add the semicolon to the end?

The semicolon is not necessary if the immediate character following the entity is a white space or end of line. Your browser will render the entity inside the textarea block, even though it doesn't have a trailing semicolon. I assure you there is nothing strange going on.

 

[honestrosewater]

wave,
Thanks for the info.