This happened because we use Jsoup library for stripping html, while the Ruby's implementation is simple and naive:

    STRIP_HTML_BLOCKS = Regexp.union(
      /<script.*?<\/script>/m,
      /<!--.*?-->/m,
      /<style.*?<\/style>/m
    )
    STRIP_HTML_TAGS = /<.*?>/m

    def strip_html(input)
      empty  = ''
      result = input.to_s.gsub(STRIP_HTML_BLOCKS, empty)
      result.gsub!(STRIP_HTML_TAGS, empty)
      result
    end

And we probably should go naive implementation too

Will it be safer?
No.
Will it be more compatible?
Yes.

Fixed in 0.9.1.0. Side effect - jsoup dependency removed as not in use. If someone used it as transitive dependency in own projects, must add that back manually:

    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.jsoup</groupId>
      <artifactId>jsoup</artifactId>
      <version>1.15.3</version>
    </dependency>

As for this library the Jsoup has single use here.

very much appreciate the fix here! Now that the fix is in place though, is there any other way to unescape strings at this point?

@ugenl probably not. as unescaping is destructive operation - you never know which symbol before unescaping was represented via escape sequence and which not.

yeah, fair enough - and people can directly substitute via replace if necessary anyway. Sounds good