Hi:
The PROTECTSPECIALCHARS style attribute is useful when you want to pass native HTML tags (like the <DIV> tag) or native RTF control strings (like \tab instruction) into your ODS output for the purpose of telling ODS -not- to turn on encoding for the < or the > or the \.
SASReport XML is not RTF or PDF output. Under normal circumstances, something like this in a title:
[pre]
title 'Report for Sales > 500';
[/pre]
--should display the greater than sign correctly in the title, without needing to use the PROTECTSPECIALCHARS attribute. On the other hand, if you wanted to do this (for some reason)
[pre]
title '<div><h1>My Really Big Title</h1></div>';
[/pre]
-- pass <div> and an <h1> tags to ODS HTML, then you would either need to set PROTECTSPECIALCHARS=OFF in the style template for the title or you'd have to use ODS ESCAPECHAR to use the style attribute for this title string only.
However, SASReport XML is designed to work in a number of different client applications, so the first TITLE statement ('Report for Sales > 500') should work in all client applications -- if it does not, then this is one reason to work with SAS Tech Support.
In addition, when you work with SASReport XML, in the various client applications, it makes a real difference whether you are using stored processes or not and which client application is receiving the stored process results. For example, if you had the second title statment (using HTML tags) in a stored process, I would only expect that <div> tag to work if the stored process results were HTML (in EG, Word, Excel or the Information Delivery Portal). I would NOT expect the second title statement to work in Web Report Studio or PowerPoint--because those client applications only receive SASReport XML.
I still recommend that you work with Tech Support on this issue. There are some HTML encoding issues and encoding functions that you can use when working with characters that could possibly have dual meaning, such as < and >. It might also be the case that someone incorrectly applied the HTMLENCODE function:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/62618/HTML/default/a001157104.htm
and did not remember to apply the HTMLDECODE function:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/62618/HTML/default/a001146073.htm
However, SASReport XML is XML and not HTML and Tech Support is your best resource in this matter.
cynthia