Jasper has been updated sometimes ago to handle correctly external entities
included from web.xml when this entities live in the WEBAPP, but in precompiling
stage it didn't detect them.

here is a sample web.xml 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!DOCTYPE web-app
    PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
    "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd" [ 

<!ENTITY base      SYSTEM "base-tc55.xml">
<!ENTITY jsp SYSTEM  "jsp.xml">
]>

<web-app>
  <display-name>MyApp</display-name>
  <context-param>
    <param-name>MyReleaseDate<param-name>
    <param-value>20051018</param-value>
  </context-param>

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>startup</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.domain.web.StartupServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>myParm</param-name>
      <param-value>myValue</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>

&base;
&jsp;

  <session-config>
    <session-timeout>30</session-timeout>
  </session-config>
 </web-app>

the base.xml could be :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>login</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.domain.web.LoginServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>stand.alone</param-name>
      <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>

  </servlet>
  
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>logout</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.domain.web.LogoutServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>demo</param-name>
      <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
  </servlet>


and a sample jsp.xml :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>