> it gives 8714! and not 8712 like it should be upon w3c mathml  
> characters page. i checked our dtd and we're including isotech.ent  
> (ISO General Technical Entities V0.3) and that is saying


aha not only did I once know this, I even documented it!

> http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/iso9573-2003doc/9573sec5.html#sec5.2

says
Entity: [isin][ISOTECH]
   MathML [U+2208][ELEMENT OF]
   Stix   [U+220A][]
MathML defines isin incorrectly for HTML compat
This skews variant and negated forms.

isin
  dkb=[U+220A][SMALL ELEMENT OF]
  mml=[U+2208][ELEMENT OF]


I believe that docbook 5 uses the entity sets from
http://www.w3.org/2003
so the incompatibility should go eventually.

We're way off topic now though for xsl-list, any questions about the
entity sets are welcome on www-math@xxxxxxx



One  way to avoid such confusion in future, is to use the same dtd in
your stylesheet as your input data then your test could have been
written

test=".='∈'"
and you would never have had to know what number was assigned to that
character.


David