Entities and Entity References

I've noticed that the test suite tests the following scenario: 
When entity references are expanded, the test suite tests that Entity
nodes and their replacement value are available in the DOM tree
(attrsetvaluenomodificationallowederrEE,
characterdataappenddatanomodificationallowederrEE,
textsplittextnomodificationallowederrEE, etc.)

Given that the DOM Level 1 fails to define when Entity nodes are present
in the DOM tree, I believe that the test suite should NOT be testing the
above case. 

If you look at the description for the Entity interface
(http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-DOM-Level-1-19981001/level-one-core.html#ID-527DCFF2)
you will find that the specification only defines the what happens to
the entity replacement value ("if the replacement value is available,
the corresponding Entity node's child list represents the structure of
that replacement text"), but says nothing about when Entity nodes are
present in the tree.
 
On the other hand, the DOM Level 3 does define the feature "entities"
that controls both Entity and EntityReference nodes: 
[[
false 
[optional]
Remove all EntityReference and Entity nodes from the document, putting
the entity expansions directly in their place
]]

Thus, I would expect DOM Level 3 implementations to fail DOM Level 1
test suite for the described above case.


Any comments?
-- 
Elena Litani / IBM Toronto

Received on Monday, 29 April 2002 17:21:31 UTC