If you have troubles (like me) getting data from ISO-8859-1 encoded forms where user copy and paste from word, this routine could be useful.
It adds to the standard get_html_translation_table the codes of the characters usually M$ Word replacs into typed text.
Otherwise those characters would never be displayed correctly in html output.
function get_html_translation_table_CP1252() {
$trans = get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES);
$trans[chr(130)] = '‚'; // Single Low-9 Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(131)] = 'ƒ'; // Latin Small Letter F With Hook
$trans[chr(132)] = '„'; // Double Low-9 Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(133)] = '…'; // Horizontal Ellipsis
$trans[chr(134)] = '†'; // Dagger
$trans[chr(135)] = '‡'; // Double Dagger
$trans[chr(136)] = 'ˆ'; // Modifier Letter Circumflex Accent
$trans[chr(137)] = '‰'; // Per Mille Sign
$trans[chr(138)] = 'Š'; // Latin Capital Letter S With Caron
$trans[chr(139)] = '‹'; // Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(140)] = 'Œ '; // Latin Capital Ligature OE
$trans[chr(145)] = '‘'; // Left Single Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(146)] = '’'; // Right Single Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(147)] = '“'; // Left Double Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(148)] = '”'; // Right Double Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(149)] = '•'; // Bullet
$trans[chr(150)] = '–'; // En Dash
$trans[chr(151)] = '—'; // Em Dash
$trans[chr(152)] = '˜'; // Small Tilde
$trans[chr(153)] = '™'; // Trade Mark Sign
$trans[chr(154)] = 'š'; // Latin Small Letter S With Caron
$trans[chr(155)] = '›'; // Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark
$trans[chr(156)] = 'œ'; // Latin Small Ligature OE
$trans[chr(159)] = 'Ÿ'; // Latin Capital Letter Y With Diaeresis
ksort($trans);
return $trans;
}