The prof here. Traipse likely has the characters problem and will likely continue to have the problem until the next milestone. I think the problem is due to how the string is convert from chat to a string of XML and then from a string of XML to a string of HTML. The root of the problem is likely the first conversion, from chat to XML. Because the software mainly deals with python's 'str' as the basis for string conversion it would not have support for special characters. If the software received the characters and replaced them with the HTML equivalent the problem would go away.

As for my apparent absence ... I just have not been receiving emails to let me know new posts have been posted. I've been watching my email.