Support for HTML Character Entity References in VS?

Hi all,

one thing I always wondered about (in all previous versions of Visual Studio, and this continues with the brand-new VS 2008): How comes the HTML editor offers no support for HTML character entity references? IMHO that should be one of the most basic  and fundamental features of any decent HTML editor - or am I missing something here?

To explain: What I would expect is that entering any national or special character like 'ä' or '©' would automatically convert them to their relative entity references like "ä" or "©"... Or as the least minimum, there should be something like an"Insert Special Character" command with a table to choose from (much like "Insert Symbol" in MS Word).  

So - is there any good reason why that functionality is completely missing from the HTML editor in VS - and that since ever?

Thanks for any insight,

 Guido