& XSLT On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:22:30 +0200, Petr Pajas <pajas@[...].cz>   
wrote:

>  2009/10/10 Nicolas Mendoza <mendoza@[...].no>:
> > On Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:58:53 +0200, Petr Pajas <pajas@[...].cz>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> 2009/10/9 Nicolas Mendoza <mendoza@[...].no>:
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:51:32 +0200, Aristotle Pagaltzis
> >>> <pagaltzis@[...].de>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> * Nicolas Mendoza <mendoza@[...].no> [2009-10-09 17:55]:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Is there some way to keep the entities intact when parsing and
> >>>>> serlalizing numeric entities?
> >>>>
> >>>> Why would you want such a thing?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Because I'm feeding it data and I want it to come out the same way?  
> >>> Just
> >>> like &amp; does. (I want to distinguish an incoming &#39; and "'". So  
> >>> I
> >>> don't want it to alter my valid XML data, basically.)
> >>>
> >>> Actually it's a bit surprising that libxml2 does that.
> >>
> >> Huh? There is absolutly nothing surprising about that, it is an XML
> >> parser? Programming XML would be hell if XML parsers didn't do this.
> >>>
> >>> From the XML point of view, &#39; and ' are the same thing! Read the
> >>
> >> XML spec.
> >>
> >> To be fair, there are few cases when particular formatting matters,
> >> but those are (supposed to be) dealt with by XML C14N (and possibly
> >> XML Encryption and XML Signature).
> >>
> >
> > I think I can sympathize with your sentiments, but I'm not sure I can  
> > agree
> > 100% that altering in-data is the optimal way of functioning.
> 
>  The data is the charcters, not the way they are serialized in XML.
>  What you want is of the same nature as asking the parser to remember
>  the original whitespace within XML tags, e.g. to distinguish
> 
>  <foo bar="baz"/>
> 
>  from
> 
>  <foo
>         bar="baz"
>      />
> 
>  No widely-adopted XML API can preserve this distinction, nor it can
>  preserve the distinction between a character and the corresponding
>  numerical entity. XML APIs typically exchange content, not
>  representation.
> 
> > No matter if they are the same in theory.
> 
>  What theory that would be? I'm not talking about theories, I'm talking
>  about the XML 1.0 spec.
> 
> > Why would it be hell if XML parsers didn't convert numeric entities to
> > ASCII, UTF-8 (or whatever charset is possible/available at the time) on
> > serialization?
> 
>  It would be hell because it would be like having no parser at all.
> 
>  Also note that parsers don't "convert" anything on serialization, but
>  already during parse. In fact, parsers don't serialize (serializers
>  do); they parse, i.e. read the input and decode the content into some
>  structured form, passing it via some API to a handler (possibly a
>  serializer or an application). Content, not the way it is encoded
>  (alghough, to be fair, some do parsers send the original as well, e.g.
>  via offsets to the source stream; from the implementation point of
>  view this may be costly, from the practical point of view it is seldom
>  useful).
> 
>  So to sum up: if you don't want a parser to parse your input, then
>  don't use one! Just process the XML as text (e.g. using regexps,
>  lexer, tokenizer, or a parser that gives you real low-level access),
>  since apparently you are not interested in the content of the XML
>  document but one particular textual representation of the content in
>  XML.
> 
>  -- Petr

So, given that we accept this, why is &amp; not converted to "'"?

-- 
Nicolas Mendoza
http://my.opera.com/nicomen
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