Predefined entities in XHTML 1.0

The recently published second edition of the XHTML 1.0 specification 
states in section 3.2, User Agent Conformance,

   1. If it encounters an entity reference (other than one of the
      predefined entities) for which the User Agent has processed no
      declaration (which could happen if the declaration is in the
      external subset which the User Agent hasn't read), the entity
      reference should be processed as the characters (starting with the
      ampersand and ending with the semi-colon) that make up the entity
      reference.

Identical text appears in the previous edition and in modularization of 
XHTML.

The question is what does "predefined entities" mean here? (This is the 
only place in the spec where this phrase is used.) Is it talking about 
the five predefined XML entities (&, " ', < and >) 
or does it mean the much larger set of HTML entities including things 
like © and  ?

If the former, then this really seems quite draconian. It basically 
requires browsers to validate. In any case, a clarification of the 
intent in the spec seems like a good idea.

-- 
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ 
|               Java I/O (O'Reilly & Associates, 1999)               |
|            http://www.ibiblio.org/javafaq/books/javaio/            |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1565924851/cafeaulaitA/   |
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|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/     |
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Received on Monday, 15 October 2001 15:17:51 UTC