RE: Escher could have drawn it (Re: XML Schema and Entities)

[Evan Lenz <elenz@xyzfind.com>]

Eric van der Vlist wrote:
> 2) Inclusions (external parsed entities),
> This is the goal of XInclude that goes beyond DTDs by allowing to
> include subsets of documents.

A shortcoming of XInclude, when compared to entities, is that XInclude only
allows a merging of infosets, and fragments don't have infosets. This means
that XInclude is not currently up to the task of replacing entities by a
long shot.

"Well-formed XML entities that do not have defined infosets (e.g. an
external entity file with multiple top-level elements) are outside the scope
of this specification, either for use as a source infoset or the result
infoset."[1]

Also, the spec claims that XInclude and entities are "complementary"
technologies.[2]

Evan Lenz
XYZFind Corp.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/#processing
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/#rel-extent