JSF 2.0: Why is nbsp; Illegal in Included Files?

Question

I have a file containing a snippet with nbsp; (with an ampersand) as below. The file will later be referenced with ui:include.
<ui:composition xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets">
foo&#38;nbsp;bar
</ui:composition>Result: "Error Parsing /snippets/header.xhtml: Error Traced[line: 3] The entity "nbsp" was referenced, but not declared."
It works fine if I change it to #160; (with an ampersand) as here:
<ui:composition xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets">
foo&#38;#160;bar
</ui:composition>Now, this was also the behavior of facelets in JSF 1.x, but I had been under the impression that it was a bug, not a feature. Is this the expected behavior in JSF 2.0? If so, why? And where does it say so in the spec?
I am using Mojarra 2.0.1 FCS with Java 6.0.15 and Tomcat 6.0.18.
Thanks!
- Marty
[JSF 2.0 Training Courses|http://courses.coreservlets.com/public-courses/jsf2/]

Answer 1

BalusC wrote:
Facelets uses XHTML. XHTML is based on XML. HTML-style entities (&name;) are illegal in XML. You should use XML-style entities instead. Thus, use &#codepoint; instead wherein `codepoint` represents the unicode codepoint.I believe you are mistaken.
First of all, the XHTML 1.0 specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/) specifically says in section A.2 "the XHTML entity sets are the same as for HTML 4, ...". And, the spec uses "lt;", "gt;", "quot", and "euro;" (and probably more) within various parts of the spec. And, named character entities validate without error at http://validator.w3.org/ [Note that I deliberately left the ampersands off the front in the text above]
Second, nbsp; works fine in normal facelets pages. It is only in included pages where the current Mojarra implementation has problems.
After I posted my message, I got email from a JSF spec member who said it is a bug in the current implementation, and that I should report it. I did.
Cheers-
- Marty
[JSF 2.0 Training Courses|http://courses.coreservlets.com/public-courses/jsf2/]