In the context of XML, escaping a character means replacing the character by
an entity reference or character reference, for example replacing < by &lt;
or " by &quot;. (Why this is called "escaping" is essentially historical;
it's an analogy with the use of escape sequences in ASCII-based line
protocols, for example the use of a sequence like "ESC [ G" to set a
dot-matrix printer into italics mode).

So "output escaping" means turning special characters such as "<" appearing
in the output of a transformation into their escaped representations such as
"&lt;".

disable-output-escaping="yes" suppresses this behaviour.

You never need to say disable-output-escaping="no", because it is the
default and almost invariably the right setting. I've often wondered if the
language designers chose a long name for the attribute in the hope that
people wouldn't use it carelessly; in practice I have seen some evidence
that beginners don't know what output escaping is and therefore think it
might be a good idea to switch it off.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marroc [mailto:marrocdanderfluff@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 22 February 2008 11:03
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Mysterious 0utput Escaping
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I also want to know the meaning of "output escaping", as in a 
> dictionary definition, because I can't relate it to any use 
> of those words in their normal, everyday sense. Does it mean 
> that we allow the output 'to escape'.
> It's also, by default, used as a double-negative:
> disable-output-escaping="no" which is silly really - 
> output-escaping="yes they are"??? Can anyone help?
> 
> Richard