| EntityReference objects may be inserted into the structure
model when an entity reference is in the source document, or when the
user wishes to insert an entity reference. Note that character references
and references to predefined entities are considered to be expanded by
the HTML or XML processor so that characters are represented by their
Unicode equivalent rather than by an entity reference. Moreover, the XML
processor may completely expand references to entities while building the
structure model, instead of providing EntityReference
objects. If it does provide such objects, then for a given
EntityReference node, it may be that there is no
Entity node representing the referenced entity. If such an
Entity exists, then the subtree of the
EntityReference node is in general a copy of the
Entity node subtree. However, this may not be true when an
entity contains an unbound namespace prefix. In such a case, because the
namespace prefix resolution depends on where the entity reference is, the
descendants of the EntityReference node may be bound to
different namespace URIs.
As for Entity nodes, EntityReference nodes and
all their descendants are readonly.
See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification.
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