[xslt] entity processing from an extrenal dtd

[spa3 sporty org]

maybe i'm doing something wrong, but in my dtd, i have a line like this, the first line at that...

	<!ENTITY tab "&#09;">

in my xsl file, i refer to it.. 

	.... ()"/>&tab;<xsl:value-of ....

so now i get this


--
> xsltproc --debug product.xsl product.xml | more
product.xsl:28: error: Entity 'tab' not defined
        <xsl:value-of select="Title/text()"/>&tab;<xsl:value-of select="VarType/text()
                                           ^
cannot parse product.xsl
--

other than the ^ being 2 characters off, it tells me i can't use tab.  if i kill off the ampersand of course, i get the word "tab".  if i move the dtd out of the way, it tells me the dtd is missing, which is a comfort.

what gives?  

-s