W3 and HTML special characters

[Jim Rebman <jrebman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

After talking with another W3 user who is using a more current version of
W3 than I, there seems to be a problem when W3 encounters HTML special
characters of the form: &#xxx;  where xxx is a numeric value.  These
characters render as extended ASCII characters, and other reserved HTML
characters such as greater-than and less-than.  I am working with a
university textbook which makes liberal use of the special characters, and
need to be able to access them.  Also, can thes extended ASCII values be
voiced through an exception dictionary, or some like mechanism?  At the
moment I have to use Window-Eyes in conjunction with NetScape or the even
more dreaded Internet Explorer.  This works satisfactorily, but since the
rest of the course involves writing and compiling C++ code, and the
professor's editor of choice is EMACS, I would like to have all of the
tools for the class running on the same platform.

Thanks,

Jim Rebman
jrebman@xxxxxxxxxxx
jrebman@xxxxxxxxxxx