can we have parameter entities in ATTLIST for reuse of attributes specification? #xml #dtd

*See this very post on wiki1.*

On Dec 1, 2013, user Sammi De Guzman asked on StackOverflow:
(https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20308365)

How do I declare attributes common to multiple elements?

I have multiple elements I want to give these attributes:

Is this possible somehow in DTD, or will I have to do it manually?

(Also, while I\’m here, I don\’t think it was such a good idea to declare the margin and padding attributes that way. Does anyone know a better way?)

4.5h later, Daniel Haley answered (the answer is now the accepted answer):

Each element needs to have its own attribute declaration (ATTLIST). However, you can use a parameter entity to reuse the bulk of it.

Here\’s another example that has a mix of the parameter entity references along with attributes that only appear on the individual elements.

However, making a minimal-example file exampl.xml out of these, we get the following results from xmmlint, Chromium, and Firefox:

• xmllint:

  exampl.xml:12: parser error : ATTLIST: no name for Attribute
  <!ATTLIST elem1 %attrs;>
                  ^
  exampl.xml:12: parser error : internal error: xmlParseInternalSubset: error detected in Markup declaration
  
  <!ATTLIST elem1 %attrs;>
                         ^
  Entity: line 1: 
  width   CDATA   "0"
  ^
  exampl.xml:12: parser error : internal error: xmlParseInternalSubset: error detected in Markup declaration
  
  <!ATTLIST elem1 %attrs;>
                         ^
  exampl.xml:14: parser error : StartTag: invalid element name
  <!ELEMENT elem2 (#PCDATA)>
   ^
  exampl.xml:14: parser error : Extra content at the end of the document
  <!ELEMENT elem2 (#PCDATA)>
   ^
  

• Chromium: error on line 12 at column 17: ATTLIST: no name for Attribute

• Firefox:

  XML Parsing Error: illegal parameter entity reference
  Location: file:///path/exampl.xml
  Line Number 12, Column 17:
  

So, can we really use that? Is that answer correct? What can we use that method in? I guess not in much.

If you have any comments, please just email me.