Re: incorrect entity reference usage?

[Joseph_Kesselman]

This isn't something Xalan handles directly. Resolving entity references is
the parser's job, so we count on Xerces -- or whichever parser you may have
installed in place of Xerces -- doing it for us. If there is a bug, it's a
parser bug.

However, I suspect that you're getting bitten by
order-of-declaration/order-of-reference isues...