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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 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; but if such
an Entity exists, then the child list of the
EntityReference node is the same as that of the Entity
node. As with the Entity node, all descendants of the
EntityReference are readonly.
The resolution of the children of the EntityReference (the
replacement value of the referenced Entity) may be lazily
evaluated; actions by the user (such as calling the childNodes
method on the EntityReference node) are assumed to
trigger the evaluation.
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