When you search "XML escape characters" you will get various results, one of them being https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1091945/what-characters-do-i-need-to-escape-in-xml-documents

One of the things these links always say is to "use the appropriate class or library" so you don't have to worry about escape characters in the first place. But they never say which class or library. Also, I don't see how a coding library or class will help me, as I'm writing XML, which has nothing in itself to do with C++, or C#, or whatever. I've just been using Notepad++ for its syntax highlighting.

So... I guess my question is: To anyone that writes XML, what is your favorite tool to edit XML such that you don't have to worry about escape characters, and possibly improve tedious things like automatically putting tag delimiters and such?

On Windows I've used XML Notepad (from MS, I believe) and it's alright.

You are asking about two different things: an XML editor and an XML library.

If you wish to play with XML in code, you'll need a library.
http://www.cplusplus.com/faq/sequences/strings/xml/

Good luck!

Thanks both, I'll try out XML Notepad on windows.