[character code]

ContentHandler.characters(), ContentHandler.ignorableWhitespace()

These calls provide one or more characters in the UTF-16 encoding. Normally, each Java char is a single [character code], but surrogate pairs are used to encode characters from the "Astral Planes," which don't fit into 16 bits. (No whitespace characters need surrogate pairs.)

[element content whitespace]

When known, this Boolean property is encoded by using the ignorableWhitespace() callback instead of characters(). Most SAX parsers report this property even when they aren't validating, though that's not required. (If any external parameter entities are skipped, it is not possible to reliably provide this information.)

[parent]

Applications must keep track of this information item if it is needed.