can we have parameter entities in ATTLIST for reuse of attributes specification

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:

<!ATTLIST [all these elements]
    width   CDATA   "0"
    height  CDATA   "0"
    margin  CDATA   "0 0 0 0"
    padding CDATA   "0 0 0 0"
    rotation CDATA  "0"
    halign  (left|center|right|full)    "center"
    valign  (top|middle|bottom|full)    "middle"
    >

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.

<!ENTITY % attrs 
    'width   CDATA   "0"
     height  CDATA   "0"
     margin  CDATA   "0 0 0 0"
     padding CDATA   "0 0 0 0"
     rotation CDATA  "0"
     halign  (left|center|right|full)    "center"
     valign  (top|middle|bottom|full)    "middle"'>

<!ELEMENT elem1 (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST elem1 %attrs;<

<!ELEMENT elem2 (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST elem2 %attrs;>

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

<!ELEMENT elem1 (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST elem1 
    attr1 CDATA #IMPLIED
    %attrs;              >

<!ELEMENT elem2 (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST elem2 
    attr2 CDATA #IMPLIED
    %attrs;              >

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.