1 /*
2  * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.
3  *
4  * This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
5  * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as
6  * published by the Free Software Foundation.  Oracle designates this
7  * particular file as subject to the "Classpath" exception as provided
8  * by Oracle in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.
9  *
10  * This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
11  * ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
12  * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
13  * version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that
14  * accompanied this code).
15  *
16  * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version
17  * 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
18  * Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
19  *
20  * Please contact Oracle, 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA
21  * or visit www.oracle.com if you need additional information or have any
22  * questions.
23  */
24 
25 /*
26  * This file is available under and governed by the GNU General Public
27  * License version 2 only, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
28  * However, the following notice accompanied the original version of this
29  * file and, per its terms, should not be removed:
30  *
31  * Copyright (c) 2004 World Wide Web Consortium,
32  *
33  * (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for
34  * Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This
35  * work is distributed under the W3C(r) Software License [1] in the hope that
36  * it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
37  * warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
38  *
39  * [1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231
40  */
41 
42 package org.w3c.dom;
43 
44 /**
45  * <code>EntityReference</code> nodes may be used to represent an entity
46  * reference in the tree. Note that character references and references to
47  * predefined entities are considered to be expanded by the HTML or XML
48  * processor so that characters are represented by their Unicode equivalent
49  * rather than by an entity reference. Moreover, the XML processor may
50  * completely expand references to entities while building the
51  * <code>Document</code>, instead of providing <code>EntityReference</code>
52  * nodes. If it does provide such nodes, then for an
53  * <code>EntityReference</code> node that represents a reference to a known
54  * entity an <code>Entity</code> exists, and the subtree of the
55  * <code>EntityReference</code> node is a copy of the <code>Entity</code>
56  * node subtree. However, the latter may not be true when an entity contains
57  * an unbound namespace prefix. In such a case, because the namespace prefix
58  * resolution depends on where the entity reference is, the descendants of
59  * the <code>EntityReference</code> node may be bound to different namespace
60  * URIs. When an <code>EntityReference</code> node represents a reference to
61  * an unknown entity, the node has no children and its replacement value,
62  * when used by <code>Attr.value</code> for example, is empty.
63  * <p>As for <code>Entity</code> nodes, <code>EntityReference</code> nodes and
64  * all their descendants are readonly.
65  * <p ><b>Note:</b> <code>EntityReference</code> nodes may cause element
66  * content and attribute value normalization problems when, such as in XML
67  * 1.0 and XML Schema, the normalization is performed after entity reference
68  * are expanded.
69  * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification</a>.
70  */
71 public interface EntityReference extends Node {
72 }
73