fwiw, I note that xinclude uses the two attribute approach:
an href attribute that is a URI reference without a fragment
identifier and an xpointer attribute that gives just the
fragment identifier.
paul
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Stayton [mailto:]
> Sent: Tuesday, 2010 February 16 13:08
> To: DocBook Technical Committee
> Subject: [docbook-tc] resource fragments
>
> I have a question regarding referencing fragments of a resource. It
> seems there could
> be two ways to include a fragment of a resource in your document:
>
> 1. Define the resource element as a fragment, as in this example from
> Larry's sample:
>
> <resource xml:id="svn.properties"
> fileref="subversion/properties.xml#using.properties"/>
> ...
> <module resourceref="svn.properties"/>
>
> Here the resource's fileref includes a fragment identifier, and the
> module's
> resourcref is a straight IDREF.
>
> 2. Reference a fragment of a whole resource from a module:
>
> <resource xml:id="svn.properties"
> fileref="subversion/properties.xml"/>
> ...
> <module resourceref="svn.properties#using.properties"/>
>
> Here the resource's fileref does not have a fragment identifier, and
> the module's
> resourceref does.
>
>
> In case 1, the fileref attribute is a URI and # is a true URI fragment
> identifier.
>
> In case 2, the resourceref is not a URI but a IDREF. Adding fragment
> identifier syntax
> after it would not be a valid IDREF, so its definition would have be
> changed to CDATA
> to accept such syntax. The interpretation of the syntax would be to
> fetch the
> resource element by its id and attach the fragment identifier to its
> fileref value.
> Also, this syntax mixes information from the assembly (the resource's
> xml:id) and the
> resource (the id in the file named properties.xml).
>
> Are references like case 2 to be permitted? My first instinct is
"no",
> but I'm sure
> that someone will be asking for it at some point. Consider a resource
> that is pretty
> large, non-editable, and you want to pull multiple fragments from it.
> If we permit
> only case 1, for each fragment you want to reference from that large
> resource, you
> would have to define a new resource element using "filename#id"
syntax.
> Then, after
> you have done this twenty times, you find you need to move the
resource
> file. Now you
> must update twenty resource elements to fix the fileref path.
> Allowing case 2 would
> avoid that problem.
>
> Perhaps a different syntax might work better:
>
> 3. Reference a fragment of a whole resource from a module using
> another attribute:
>
> <resource xml:id="svn.properties"
> fileref="subversion/properties.xml"/>
> ...
> <module resourceref="svn.properties" fragment="using.properties"/>
>
> This would allow a single resource element to reference the file,
keeps
> resourceref as
> an IDREF, and permits referencing a fragment of a resource. It means
> adding another
> attribute to module, though.
>
> Bob Stayton
> Sagehill Enterprises
>
>
>
>
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