<include> element in base vocabulary for DITA 2.0

[Chris Nitchie <chris.nitchie@oberontech.com>]

The <coderef> attribute is a transclusion element – it loads the referenced file and places its contents as CDATA at the location of the referencing element. However, <coderef> is a specialization of <xref>, which is not a transclusion element. That is, the specialization-based fallback behavior for <coderef> is fundamentally incompatible with the expected processing. The same is true for svgref and mathmlref. The only way for people other than the TC to create similar transclusion elements via specialization is to specialize from one of those, or customize their processors to do the right thing with their element.

 

For DITA 2.0, I suggest we add an <include> element to the base vocabulary to act as a base for specialization for these kinds of elements.

 

<include href="" format=”format” parse=”xml|text”>

  <fallback>Fallback content here</fallback>

</include>

 

This is roughly modeled on xinclude, but without the need for the namespace, and with @class so it can be used as a base for specialization. (And, of course, @keyref-capable.)

 

Chris