Entity handling in DOM

[Andreas Berg]

I just did some DOM programming with IBM's XML4J. I experienced that if there
is a general entity in the XML document the parser doesn't expand it and
instead just provides an EntityReference node. The DOM standard says the
parser "may" expand entities. I wondered what is the sense of not expanding?
How do other parsers handle this?

BTW, why is there a difference between general entities and parameter
entities?

To my (very naive) understanding entities are a kind of text replacement and
should be handled transparently.

Could please someone help me understand???

Thanks,

   Andreas.


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