public abstract class EntityReference
extends Node
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.
Note that this object is implemented and supported by the web
browser and results of its use may vary.