xml-dev - Re: thoughts on XInclude

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

External parsed entities are not preserved by a XSLT transformation
(they are expended by the XML parser and are no longer external entities
in the output tree).

For this reason (which is not XSLT specific), I am already using a kind
of home made XInclude in my XML documents.

If it was more integrated or generic, wouldn't we find the same problem
that with external entities :

 - if it is handled by the XML parser and expended, you have a single 
   tree but are likely to loose the structure of the includes.
 - if it is not expended, you have to manage several independent trees
   which is less convenient.

The best way to do it would be to keep the information about the include
structure which probably means impacting XPath by providing include
information at a node level and ways to match depending on the document.

Otherwise, it will either have the same problems than external entities
or be no more than the standardization of a hack which many of us are
already using.

Eric

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
> 
> Are folks on this list planning to use XInclude when it arrives?
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude
> 
> Basically, it seems like a replacement for external parsed entities, using
> an XML-based syntax:
> 
> <sample xmlns:xinclude="...still unspecified...">
>     <xinclude:include href="something.xml"/>
> </sample>
> 
> It doesn't require use of a doctype declaration, though it does require
> support for namespaces.
> 
> So far, it seems to be advancing mostly under the radar, along with XBase,
> a separate XLink spinoff.
> 
> Simon St.Laurent
> XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
> Building XML Applications
> Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
> Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
> http://www.simonstl.com
> 
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Eric van der Vlist       Dyomedea                    http://dyomedea.com
http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org              http://ducotede.com
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