Q:

Proper UTF-8 hex representation for eacute in XML for XSLT transformation

The many charts available online showing UTF-8 encodings for latin characters are somewhat confusing to me.  
For example the eacute hex representation is c3a9 for UTF-8:
UTF-8 (hex) 0xC3 0xA9 (c3a9)
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/c3a9/index.htm
So I'm guessing that would make it &#xc3a9; if it was reprented in the XML as hex???  Is this representation standard in XML for UTF-8?  The source system is sending it as 'E9' even though they say it UTF-8.  XMLSpy and Notepad++ show it is E9 anyway.
Can you clear the fog for me?  Thanks.

A:

XML uses Unicode code points in numeric character references, not encoded byte sequences. Since &eacute; is U+00E9, the system is correct.
And to head off your next question, all six characters in "&#xe9;" are valid UTF-8.

