xslt - How to declare escape character as DTD Entities in external file and import in XML files

Question

In a web project, I have a lot of XML files with non-escaped characters. I declare these characters as DTD Entities and include the list of declaration internally in each XML file, like so:

!DOCTYPE article SYSTEM "../../pubmedref/archivearticle.dtd" [
   <!ENTITY bull "&#8226;">
   <!ENTITY copy "&#169;">
   ... a long list ...
]>

Is there any way I can have these declarations in an external file and import it in the XML files? The XML files are rendered to the browser using XSLT.

FWIW, I've tried referencing a .ent file but it does not work on any of the browsers.

Answer 1

Normally you would use a parameter entity...

XML File

<!DOCTYPE article SYSTEM "../../pubmedref/archivearticle.dtd" [
<!ENTITY % ents SYSTEM "../../pubmedref/entities.ent">
%ents;
]>
<article>...</article>

Entity File (you could have multiple files)

<!ENTITY bull "&#8226;">
<!ENTITY copy "&#169;">

However, most browsers will not resolve an external entity reference so you're stuck with having the entity declarations directly in the internal subset (between [ and ] in your doctype declaration).