Both diputree and HTML are applications of XML, therefore the rules of character encoding apply to both.
This is important when embedding the diputree XML document inside the xml param.
This happens in sequence, one after the other.
So assume we want to use the & character
<HTML>
...
<APPLET code="diputree.class" archive="diputree.jar"
height="300" width="200">
<PARAM NAME="xml"
VALUE="<diputree><has><b><lt>&amp; is an
ampersand</lt></b></has></diputree>">
</APPLET>
...
</HTML>