Character entities

[James Danson]

I just learned a neat little trick to declare character entities at the top of my XSLT stylesheets. See following code.

<!-- Standard character entities -->
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [<!ENTITY gt    ">"  >
          <!ENTITY nbsp  " " >
  <!ENTITY copy  "©" >
  <!ENTITY reg   "®" >
  <!ENTITY trade "™">]>

I'd like to put these in separarate XSLT file and use <xsl:include> to include them in stylesheets where I need them. My include file looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!-- Standard character entities -->
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [<!ENTITY gt    ">"  > <!-- lt NOT required -->
  <!ENTITY nbsp  " " >
  <!ENTITY copy  "©" >
  <!ENTITY reg   "®" >
  <!ENTITY trade "™">]>
 
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
                xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" >
</xsl:stylesheet>

However, when I try to include the include file using the following code:

<xsl:include href="include.xslt" />

I get a transformation error. Can these entities be maintained in an include file? If so, can someone provide an examples of how to do so?