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xmlxhtmldtd

How do I define HTML entity references inside a valid XML document?

I need to be able to reference named HTML entities like • instead of the Unicode alternative • in an XML document. I have control over some parts of the XML document, such as defining the DOCTYPE, but doing a find-and-replace in the actual XML is not an option. I can get some elements like   and & by including the XHTML transitional DOCTYPE, but I need to define more manually. How do I do this?

-- EDIT --

Thanks to Jim's answer, here's what I ended up with. This is great because I can utilize the XHTML transitional entities, and also add my own:

<!DOCTYPE
   html
   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
   [
      <!ENTITY bull  "&#8226;">
      <!ENTITY ldquo "&#8220;">
      <!ENTITY rdquo "&#8221;">
      ... etc ...
   ]
>
Solution

  • If you can modify the the XML to include an inline DTD you can define the entities there:

    <!DOCTYPE yourRootElement [
    <!ENTITY bull "&#8226;">
    ....
]>