RE: Referring another XML Document

[Steve Rowe <sarowe@textwise.com>]

Eric Bohlman wrote:
> 5/18/01 4:51:50 AM, Vikas Rawat <vikasr@aztec.soft.net> wrote:
> > How can I refer to another XML document? i.e. to say, I
> > include references to another file and on reaching this
> > kind of tag, I jump to the referenced file, read the
> > data and come back to original file.
>
> Use external entities (see any decent XML reference).  The
> W3C is also working on XInclude, which provides for
> inclusion at a higher level than the simple text
> replacement provided by external entities, but there
> aren't many implementation yet.  Any XML parser will
> support entity inclusion.

While it's true that XInclude will perform intelligent XML
infoset merging, the latest Candidate Recommendation states
[1] that external entity files with multiple top-level
elements, which do not have defined infosets, are beyond
the scope of the specification.

More generally, in addressing Ray Whitmer's requests to
expand XInclude to cover all of the functionality of
entities in XML 1.0, Jonathan Marsh (co-editor of XInclude)
wrote [2]:

    ... XInclude is NOT intended as a full replacement
    for entities, which is a perception that we will
    have to combat more effectively.  It is a
    modularity mechanism designed to complement
    entities, and overcome some of the problems
    encountered by users of external entities for
    modularity purposes.

Steve Rowe
MNIS-TextWise Labs

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/#processing
[2]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-xinclude-comments/2001Apr/
0000.html