Xalan's general entity processing in stylesheet

[John Black]

I am running an example from Bob DuCharme's book "XSLT Quickly" , page 237.  I have clipped and pasted the important lines below:

 

<!DOCTYPE stylesheet [
<!ENTITY space "<xsl:text> </xsl:text>">
]>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
     version="1.0">

 

<xsl:template match="employee">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="first"/>&space;
</xsl:template>

 

</xsl:stylesheet>

An entity is declared at the top of the stylesheet named space.  It is a simple text element whose content is a single space character.  It is used later on, after the apply-templates element.  However, while processing this with Xalan, I get the following error:

 

file:///C:/xml/xslt/tutorials/DuCharme/xq537a.xsl; Line 8; Column 48; XSLT Error (javax.xml.transform.TransformerConfigurationException): javax.xml.transform.TransformerException: javax.xml.transform.TransformerException: xsl:text is not allowed in this position in the stylesheet!

I am using version 2.2 D14, invoked with the following command line:

 

C:\xml\xslt\tutorials\DuCharme>\bea\jdk131\bin\java -cp \xml\xalan-j_2_2_D14\bin\xalan.jar;\xml\xalan-j_2_2_D14\bin\\xerces.jar;\xml\xalan-j_2_2_D14\bin\xml-apis.jar org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -in xq528.xml -xsl xq537a.xsl -out xq538.txt 

 

Is this a problem with Xalan?  Xerces?  I believe the code is is correct and should work.  In fact if you replace the entity reference with its contents, the stylesheet does perform as intended.  The message is incorrect, xsl:text _IS_ allowed in that position in the stylesheet!

 

Thanks,

 

John Black

Senior Software Architect

Deltek Systems, Inc.

8280 Greensboro Drive

McLean, VA 22102

703-734-8606 x4656

[EMAIL PROTECTED]