With a Future of XML workshop in the offing, maybe it's time to revisit one of the oldest XML feature requests: binding general entities without using the internal/external subset.

There have been numerous more-or-less serious proposals to address this requirement over the years---here's a new (?) one.

Suppose we introduce a new official PI, named xml-entity:

with the obvious consequence that any use thereafter of &copyright; would produce a ©. That would allow a few entity declarations to be added to an XML document.

To enable large numbers of entity 'declarations' to be managed effectively, the next step would be to introduce xml-entities as well:

and

where the referenced files could use either the old syntax or the new PIs.

Simple, low-impact, and it's backwards compatible. It won't work with SOAP, which forbids PIs altogether (why?).




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