Re: Local entities in XHTML

A third issue I wanted to raise about local declarations:

3- Even though Firefox reads the local declaration subset in XHTML 
files, it will not read external entities. (It also does not read 
external entities for general XML files.) If find it annoying, and 
would like to think that it (Firefox) is wrong. But, I think I 
remember reading that non-validating applications can decide whether 
they read external entities or not, and be called "conformant" 
anyway. This makes the external entity mechanism quite fragile.

Can someone confirm that reading external entities is optional for 
non-validating applications? Is there any good reason why Firefox 
does not anyway read external entities (both in XHTML & general XML), 
even if it does not have to? (It would be a trifle to implement, wouldn't it?)

Again, I am looking forward to reading your answers!

Yves