[xml-dev] Handling internal general entities with SAX

["Devlin, Kurt" <Kurt.Devlin@westgroup.com>]

In SAX, is there a way to handle internal general entities without declaring
them? I would like to be able to regognize &test; without having to
explicitly define it with <!ENTITY test "[this is a test]">.

The reason for this is that we are taking our XML to several different
output formats and each will want to handle some entities differently. We
had considered using empty "macro elements", like <test />, to accomplish
this, but sometimes these entities occur in attributes. Also, we want to be
able to define a default replacement text for entities and be able to log
when unhandled entities are encountered rather that having the parser report
an error and quit.

I tried implementing an EntityResolver, but that is only for external entity
references. I also tried implementing a LexicalHandler, but it always got an
error first and never got the startEntity() event. 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Kurt