#25 [0.8.8] File l10n-set.xml

Maxim Cournoyer — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 02:11:03 -0000

Thanks; this resolved all the 'error : xmlAddEntity: invalid redeclaration of predefined entity' I was seeing building the documentation of git. Applied to the docbook2x package in GNU Guix.

#25 [0.8.8] File l10n-set.xml

Sebastian Pipping — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 22:55:50 -0000

PS: Here's a version of the patch with the file path adjusted to fit GNU/Linux distros out of the box. Gentoo now has that patch applied to its package app-text/docbook2X.

[0.8.8] File l10n-set.xml

Sebastian Pipping — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 22:35:42 -0000

Hello!

It has come to my attention that file l10n-set.xml of docbook2X contains an invalid re-declaration of predefined XML entity lt that it then references as < further down to include the content of file lt.xml to translate terms to Lithuanian language:

# grep -n -C1 lt /usr/share/docbook2X/xslt/common/text/l10n-set.xml
23-<!ENTITY ko SYSTEM "ko.xml">
24:<!ENTITY lt SYSTEM "lt.xml">
25-<!ENTITY nl SYSTEM "nl.xml">
--
67-&ko;
68:&lt;
69-&nl;

# grep -n 'language-name' /usr/share/docbook2X/xslt/common/text/lt.xml 
8:    <l:english-language-name>Lithuanian</l:english-language-name>

The XML 1.0r4 specification is is clear in section 4.6 Predefined Entities that this is invalid, saying:

If the entities lt or amp are declared, they MUST be declared as internal entities whose replacement text is a character reference to the respective character (less-than sign or ampersand) being escaped; the double escaping is REQUIRED for these entities so that references to them produce a well-formed result.

As a result of this violation, every call to docbook2x-man makes libxml2 rightfully complain about this with a warning: here's a reproducer to see this in action:

# cd "$(mktemp -d)"

# git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat

# docbook2x-man --version | head -n2
/usr/bin/docbook2x-man (part of docbook2X 0.8.8)
$Revision: 1.12 $ $Date: 2006/04/14 17:29:04 $

# docbook2x-man libexpat/expat/doc/xmlwf.xml
/usr/share/docbook2X/xslt/common/text/l10n-set.xml:24: parser warning : Invalid redeclaration of predefined entity 'lt'
<!ENTITY lt SYSTEM "lt.xml">
                           ^

Or for a reproducer with nothing but xmllint:

# xmllint - <<<'<!DOCTYPE d [<!ENTITY lt "invalid">]><d/>'
-:1: parser warning : Invalid redeclaration of predefined entity 'lt'
<!DOCTYPE d [<!ENTITY lt "invalid">]><d/>
                                  ^
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE d>
<d/>

Please consider applying the patch attached. Thank you!

Best, Sebastian

Recent changes to 25: [0.8.8] File l10n-set.xml

#25 [0.8.8] File l10n-set.xml

#25 [0.8.8] File l10n-set.xml

[0.8.8] File l10n-set.xml