Re: [xml-dev] char ref question

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

On Jan 27, 2004, at 7:53 AM, Manos Batsis wrote:

> Short version: Must character references in attribute values get 
> expanded by an XML parser?
> ...
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
> <foo bar="&#955;"/>
...
> is accessed by an API like SAX on top of an XML parser like piccolo 
> must the exposed attribute value be "&#955;" or "$B&K(B" (greek lambda)?

The XML recommendation says little about what the parser does.  
However, particularly in conjunction with the infoset, it is totally 
clear that the value of the attribute is a string of Unicode characters 
of length one, that character having the numeric value 955 and 
representing Unicode

U+03BB;GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA

A parser that passed anything other than that would be acting, uh, 
weird.

  -Tim

smime.p7s