Entities and the DOM

[keshlam@xxxxxxxxxx]

I've asked the DOM folks to sanity-check my understanding of one paragraph
of their spec. Looks like I was slightly off... but only slightly.

The DOM can represent an Entity Reference as a node, with the entity value
as a dependent subtree. But the some DOM sources may choose not to do so,
and the DOM WG didn't feel they could dictate otherwise. To handle this
(less desirable) case, the DOM spec documented the alternative of "fully
expanding" the reference, so that the results would at least be
predictable.

Thus, which approach a parser takes is considered a
quality-of-implementation issue, outside the scope of the DOM spec. If it
matters, the application should pick a parser that does generate
EntityReference nodes.

Essentially, the DOM can accurately represent and preserve non-character
Entities... if the code surrounding the DOM does so.

There'll probably be a DOM FAQ entry to clarify this.

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research
Unless stated otherwise, all opinions are solely those of the author.



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