Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: authoritative source for SGML ISO character entitydefinitions?

[Tony Graham <Tony dot Graham at sun dot com>]

Matt G. wrote at 15 Jan 2002 11:58:20 +0000:
 > Sorry if the answer to this question is obvious or well-known, but I 
 > recently discovered that I ought to be using the SGML character entities, if 
 > I'm using DSSSL (yup, the 'ol "X00E1" is not a function name error).  Once I 

That's an SGML Declaration problem, not an entity problem.

See http://www.dpawson.co.uk/docbook/dsssl/dssslgeneral.html#d70e45

You should use the SGML Declaration for XML (typically "xml.dcl") when
processing XML using Jade or OpenJade.

Prior to XML, numeric character references in SGML were all decimal:
i.e., &#[0-9]+;

Prior to XML, things that looked like &#[A-Z][A-Z0-9-_]+; in SGML were
FUNCHAR references (not that all characters aren't fun).  There's a
couple of FUNCHARs that you have to declare in the SGML Declaration --
for example, try putting a few &#RE; in a <programlisting> and see
what happens -- but you can also declare others, and Jade is
complaining that you haven't declared a FUNCHAR for what looks like a
FUNCHAR reference.

XML allows both decimal and hexadecimal numeric character references
(thank goodness).  SGML changed to allow hexadecimal numeric character
references, but you need to "turn it on" by using an SGML Declaration
that declares what will be used as the opening delimiter (look for
"HCRO" in "xml.dcl") and you need an SGML parser that supports the
change, which Jade/nsgmls does.

Using xml.dcl will get rid of your error message, but I don't know how
that will effect whether or not you really need the SGML character
entity files.

Regards,


Tony Graham
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