Re: [xsl] Inserting Entities into an XML file

["andrew welch" <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/6/06, Chad Chelius <cchelius@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I have a project where I need to insert specific entities throughout
> an XML document for some of the basic entities like (', &, ", etc.)
> but also for some very specific math equation symbols. I know what
> entities need to be inserted but I'm not quite sure what the best way
> would be to go about this. Initially I am thinking a complex find/
> change routine, but before I spend a lot of time doing that, I'd like
> to know if anyone has a better mousetrap to accomplish this task. Any
> ideas?

You can't use XSLT to write entities into the output, or process
entities from the input - XSLT has no concept of entities - they are
an on-disk thing, whereas XSLT only deals with in-memory trees (the
XML parser has expanded them before XSLT gets to see the input tree).

One solution is to write a custom serialiser that would write out
proprietary elements as entities, but that's a lot of work.

Isn't this what MathML was designed for?

Regarding your first point of "I need to insert specific entities
throughout an XML document for some of the basic entities like (', &,
", etc.)" this doesnt make that much sense I'm afraid - maybe post an
example of what you are trying to achieve?

cheers
andrew