Re: [xsl] Preseving character entities

Subject: Re: [xsl] Preseving character entities
From: David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:23:00 GMT
> It's a term from the HTML world,

well it's from SGML really and refers to SDATA entities which are an
SGML feature not in XML. entities work differently in XHTML and HTML for
exactly this reason, and just trying to hide the differences by using
the same terminology in both cases leads in teh end to confusion rather
than simplification.

>  which I would suggest anyone to use.

normally it doesn't do much harm but sometimes it can be particularly
confusing, as here in this thread where a request for presrving (and so
generating) entities lead to an answer on how to generate entities (and
consequently require a doctype) which wasn't what was wanted.

> I would use the term entity reference only in the case an entity
> refers to either an external file or more than one character.

dangerous to interpret technical definitions in a different way than the
spec.

> I mean, any sensible man understands what I meant with numeric and named character 
> references...

unfortunately software doesn't follow rules of common sense, it just
follows the rules.

David

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