+# xml_escape: replace <, >, and & in the text stream;
+#
+# however, formatting controls that are generated internally/locally in the
+# kernel-doc script are not escaped here; instead, they begin life like
+# $blankline_html (4 of '\' followed by a mnemonic + ':'), then these strings
+# are converted to their mnemonic-expected output, without the 4 * '\' & ':',
+# just before actual output; (this is done by local_unescape())