Angela_ wrote:
It does seem the wrong way round to me. The edit box should be easy to read, and HTML entities are not going to help that. If people have a problem typing certain letters, it might be helpful to put a copy of those into the [[it:MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]] page. This is already done on the Maori and German Wikipedias. See http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning for example. This means the letters are shown at the end of every edit page and can be copied and pasted by those who can't type them on their keyboard.
Angela.
The same idea for speecial characters is used in the Spanish Wikipedia, but we have improved it with some JavaScript functions borrwed from the edit toolbar. With these functions the character is directly inserted in the editing box. Take a look at:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning
and see it in action while editing any page on es.wikipedia.
Please consider using it on any Wikipedia with special character needs. It has been greatly appreciated on es.
Manuel G. R.