xml-dev - External Resources: Catalogs, XInclude, XBase

[Leigh Dodds <ldodds@ingenta.com>]

Hi,

The recent discussion concerning catalog mechanisms and feature 
manifests seems to have dried up somewhat (probably because 
of list problems). I'd like to try to pick things again, 
as I'd hate to see some useful ideas lost.

I've got a question relating to Catalogs, XInclude and XBase
(and Packaging I guess)...

Catalogs provide a means to declare a local resource (external entity, 
DTD) as the target of a public identifier. This facilitates 
offline processing, and may improve performance in some apps 
(intranet/filesystem vs internet retrieval).

XInclude [1] provides a means to include external resources (xml, cdata, 
text) using a URI. The WD declares the XInclude to be complimentary 
to external entities [2] but later says [3] that 

"It may be possible to replace many instances of entities 
with the inclusion mechanism"

Yet XInclude doesn't support any notion of PIs or Catalogs, or 
in fact anyway to redirect inclusions to locally held resources.

Isn't this something of a problem? Doesn't the usefulness of 
a PI/Catalog mechanism also apply in this case?

Also, wouldn't a Packaging mechanism require similar functionality?

Cheers,

L.

[1]. http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude
[2]. http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude#AEN1_5_2_1_4
[3]. http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude#AEN1_5_2_2

-- 
Leigh Dodds, Systems Architect       | "Pluralitas non est ponenda
http://weblogs.userland.com/eclectic |    sine necessitates"
http://www.xml.com/pub/xmldeviant    |     -- William of Ockham

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