Maybe I'm being dense but I can't figure out how to define a text or external entity in an XML instance document and reference that entity later in the same document. In a DTD based XML, you'd define the entity in the internal DTD subset then reference it later in the content. But...
An ENTITY defined in the internal DTD of the XML instance forces DTD validation instead of schema validation. Actually just a simple DOCTYPE forces DTD mode. A textEntity or externalEntity defined in the XML instance causes the validation to fail because they're not in the schema. Putting them in the schema doesn't help. An ENTITY defined in the internal DTD of a schema can only be referenced elsewhere in the schema. A textEntity defined in the schema can only be referenced in the XML instance, and not in the rest of the schema. The point of this exercise is to give schema based XML document authors the same capability they'd have if their documents were based on a DTD: the ability to include other XML fragments in their documents without having to modify the schema. I don't know if I'm missing something, there's a Xerces bug, or if the functionality just hasn't been defined yet. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks, george
