Retrieving attributes from an internal entity

Don Kackman (DKACKMAN@agchem.com)
Mon, 2 Nov 1998 15:10:54 -0600


Hello,

I'm using Microsoft's XML parser that comes as part of IE 5 beta 1 as a
component of an application that will use XML as its document format.
Since IE5 is still a beta I'm having some trouble determining if certain
behaviors are bugs in the current version of their parser or correctly
reflect the W3C specification.

Namely I'm using an internal entity declaration as follows:

<!ENTITY om "<variable targetset='om'>OM</variable>">

as part of the internal part of the DTD.

I can load the document into MSXML (thier parser) and traverse the node
tree. When I get to the node where I am refering to the &om; entity I
get OM back as the value of that node but I cannot retrieve the
targetset attribute.

It is my understanding that internal entities should be parsed in place
when they are refered to, which should mean that I can treat that node
as I would any other. This does not seem to be the case with the MS
parser.

Is this a limitation of the MS beta parser or am I misunderstanding how
entities are used in XML?

Thank you,

Don Kackman
dkackman@agchem.com