Shared text entities

Hi all,

I am currently drafting the technical specifications for a new XML 
content management system that takes advantage of xinclude possibilities.

This system must make available to all modules shared text entities. The 
common XML entities file is problematic because it is not XML and thus 
makes those files impossible to consider as other XML modules in the 
repository, to benefit from specific features such as fine grain 
revision handling notably.

So I thought of using the xinclude plus xpointer mechanism in order to 
pick the "entities" in a real XML file instead. The problem is that the 
xinclude syntax is quite verbose, so replacing &docbook; with 
<xi:include href="entities.xml xpointer="docbook" 
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" /> makes the XML code 
significantly harder to read.

So I am interested in any experience in this area.
If you have another idea than xinclude, I'll be happy to hear it as well.

Camille.