Public Review comment: encoding in entity character refs

[Michael Freedman <michael.freedman@oracle.com>]

Section 10.2.1 states:
Consumers MUST accept both the "&" character and the corresponding 
entity reference (i.e. "&") as separators between the name/value 
pairs as this allows Portlets to produce markup fragments valid for a 
larger range of mime types. We encourage Portlets to use the entity 
reference form ("&") in static markup as this is likely to result in 
the ability to include that markup in a larger set of enclosing mime types.

An issue has come up concerning client code that has been over ambitious 
and URL encoded the ; of the & -- i.e. it emits &amp%3b.  As the use 
in this case isn't reserved by HTML urls (though ; is a reserved 
character) should consumers treat &amp%3b as equivalent to &?  It 
appears that browser do so.
     -Mike-