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Re: strange definition of & and < in iso-num.ent


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/ Alexander Dupuy <dupuy at sysd dot com> was heard to say:
| In the XML entities file iso-num.ent (ISO Numeric and Special Graphic
| Entities V0.3 $Id: iso-num.ent,v 1.3 2002/06/13 17:39:20 nwalsh Exp $)
| there are the following two rather odd definitions of &amp; and &lt;:
|
| <!ENTITY lt     "&#38;#60;"> <!-- LESS-THAN SIGN -->
| <!ENTITY amp    "&#38;#38;"> <!-- AMPERSAND -->
|
| which effectively define the &lt; entity as "&#60;" and &amp; as "&#38;".
|
| In practice, this has little effect, since the XML spec predefines
| &amp; and &lt; as "&" and "<", and most tools won't modify those
| definitions, but it can cause some confusion.  You can see somebody
| relying on these definitions in
| http://www.mulberrytech.com/quickref/XMLquickref.pdf (where, on the
| second page, the list of Predefined General Entities gives these
| strange definitions of &amp; and &lt;).
|
| Unless there is some subtle reason beyond my understanding why these
| definitions should be given as such, they should probably be corrected
| in the next release.

They are correct as defined. See the XML Recommendation[1] for an
explanation.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-predefined-ent

- -- 
Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>      | Fast. Cheap. Well. Pick two.
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | 
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |
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