I doubt anyone really *likes* numeric characer references.
>> We have no choice. They are part of HTML, like it or not.
>
>I have some difficulty with this justification (many things are currently
>part of HTML, after all, that are bad ideas :)), but I do understand that
>there are pragmatic issues that prevent dropping them completely. I just
>think that they should retain the status of "escape hatch."
Sure. My proposal just minimises the complexity of dealing with, and
the danger of using them.