RE: amp symbols

> The vendor that I am submitting these XML files to requires 
> entities because there are math equations and similar items 
> that can't be represented using ASCII. In the layout 
> application, we use a special font to generate these items. 
> So whenever they are used within the content of the file, we 
> need to change them to the appropriate entity.

That doesn't mean they have to be entity references, they could equally be
character references. You could get character references output simply by
using <xsl:output encoding="us-ascii"/>.

Anyway, are you saying that the vendor is parsing the XML using a
non-conformant XML parser? Because any conformant XML parser would accept
UTF-8 encoding for these characters.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/