Mark entity safe and reinstall escape -- make title display right Change to explicitly mark the string entity — as safe and reinstate escaping of doctitle. If this worked in the past maybe auto-escaping wasn't turned on. If it is in the newer versions of sphinx's jinja |safe is needed now (and |e isn't, but it doesn't seem to cause double escaping so....).

def preset_new(db, cl, nodeid, newvalues):
    """ Make sure the status is set on new issues"""

    if 'status' in newvalues and newvalues['status']:
        return

    new = db.status.lookup('new')
    newvalues['status'] = new


def init(db):
    # fire before changes are made
    db.issue.audit('create', preset_new)