Embeding application specific information within Docbook

[tom.kirkpatrick@virusbtn.com]

I need the docbook stylesheets to be
aware of certain environment variables specific to my website (weather
or not the user is loged in, what permissions the user has etc.) because
I need to display links (or not display links) to some of the xincluded
articles dependant on these environmental factors. 

My current idea is to run the article
through a stylesheet, which will insert an xml representation of this environment
data into the docbook document. From there I will be able to process the
resulting XML document with my own customized Docbook XSL templates. (I
am processing these articles on the fly using Apache AxKit - similar to
Apache Cocoon and so I can use XSP processing to get this dynamic data)

The question is, where is a valid place
to insert this data? It looks a little like this:

<config>
    <user>
        <userId>user
id here</userId>
        <articles>
           
<article>an article the user is allowed to view</article>
        </articles>
    </user>
</config>

If I embed this information somwhere
into the document, are the Docbook stylesheets going to choke? Can I hide
them from the Docbook stylesheets by associating them with a different
namespace?

Where would be a suitable place to insert
it? Ideally I'd like it just inder the root element.