Re: Where did my tabs go? Trying to understand xsl:va

> My guess is that this also happens when using named predefined entity 
> reference

yes but there is no magic about the predefined entity references (apart
from the fact that they are predefined) the way they are expanded just
follows from their definition. 
http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#sec-predefined-ent
the definitions need to be equivalent to

<!ENTITY lt     "&#38;#60;">
<!ENTITY gt     "&#62;">
<!ENTITY amp    "&#38;#38;">
<!ENTITY apos   "&#39;">
<!ENTITY quot   "&#34;">

note how amp and lt  uses the double encoding trick that I suggested
that you use for tab specifically to ensure that they survive being used
in entity definitions without turning into markup.

David