RE: XInclude vs SAX vs validation

[David Orchard <orchard@pacificspirit.com>]

>
> XInclude could become "low level" by dropping the dependency
> on XPointer.  The Infoset dependency is no problem (to me :),
> but the XPointer dependency changes things substantially; it's
> relying on a lot more than XML 1.0 plus infoset.
>
> - Dave
>
>

Gotcha.  You mean "low level" in the sense that the burden of 
implementation is lower.  I was thinking you meant low level as in working 
"lower" in the stack, ie not on infosets.

FWIW, there's been some debate about the utility of XInclude refering to 
XPointer'd thingies.  I personally think it's a reasonable compromise 
between providing file modularity (what you are proposing) and a complete 
entity replacement (what others have advocated).

We certainly have use cases that deal with modularity smaller than a file. 
 As an editor of various specs, I personally like the inclusion of xml 
fragments from valid xml documents.

But I do understand your point about the amount of machinery being higher 
to support these use cases.  I would argue that if most xml parsers support 
xpointer, then there's not too much overhead for xpointerized xinclude 
versus nonxpointerized xinclude.  Kind of like XML Base.

Dave Orchard