Thanks, now I understand.
I don't know of a way to alter GET_ITEM's output beyond what you've shown. But, as you've seen, the URL encoding is just that... the encoding needed for urls. Which isn't the same thing as that needed for html and you shouldn't expect it to know the difference.
Doing html encoding is something that TinyMCE and "tidy" do automatically for text you put in a rich text editor. But if you type it into a regular text field... well, you get out exactly what you put in.
Depending on what you're ultimately trying to accomplish, you might use xslt to produce the output and look into the umbraco.library:Tidy('String StringToTidy', 'Boolean LiveEditing') function.
As to your original question, "is it a missing feature?" I'd say yes and no. Yes, it is a feature that could be added directly on the GET_ITEM dialog next to the url encode checkbox. But no, in that one of the strengths of umbraco is that it isn't overly feature laden... just enough to do the job. And there are two ways to do this job already (use an RTE for html data input which will automatically produce html-encoded output, or use an xslt macro to convert raw text on the fly).
Does that make sense?
cheers,
doug.
MVP 2007/2008 - Official Umbraco Trainer for North America -
Percipient Studios