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

[Evan Lenz <elenz@xyzfind.com>]

> > "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." [XInclude]
>
> XPointer has been extended to support external entities [1], though:
>
> "Like [XSLT], XPointer allows the root node to have multiple child
> elements, to allow XPointers to address into arbitrary external parsed
> entities as well as well-formed documents."

I have trouble reconciling these two quotes then. If XPointer can address
fragments, why can't XInclude?

> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr#b2d250b5b9
>
> I wonder what you can do with a set of nodes identified by a XPointer if
> it has no infoset!

With the merging, there has to be some mangling, and that's what the
XInclude spec tries to detail. As for XPointer ranges, the story there is
that info-items can be "partially selected". The difficulty here is that
XPointer talks only about XPath++, while XInclude talks primarily about the
Infoset. It makes for some complexity in the spec, but it seems doable.

Evan Lenz
XYZFind Corp.