Let’s say you would like to post some XML in a blog post about, for example, XML in a Django template.  There’s a great plugin called WP-Syntax that adds syntax highlighting to code samples in your blog.  Once installed, you can use some code like this in your templates:

<xml>Hello</xml>

Then switch over to HTML mode and wrap that code in a pre tag like this:

<pre lang="xml" escaped="true">
    <xml>Hello</xml>
</pre>

But there’s a small catch

If you switch back and forth between HTML and Visual mode, you’ll lose that ‘escaped=”true”‘ attribute (probably a bug). Then you’ll end up with double escaped code on you page like this:

<xml>Hello</xml>

Solution?

• Only work in HTML mode, so your code doesn’t get escaped in the first place (Then you won’t need the escaped=”true” attribute either. I think you can even disable Visual mode).
• Write you post in Visual mode, then switch HTML mode, add your pre tags with escaped=”true” attribute, and then don’t switch back to Visual mode (that’s how I wrote this post).

I don’t like either solution, but I prefer the second.