Re: [docbook-apps] Use of xincludes vs. entities

[Sam Fischmann <sam.fischmann@gmail.com>]

> XInclude is not part of DocBook. I think you'd need to go through the W3C to propose enhancements to it. That
> said, your solution only solves part of the problem, I think. What about IDs on elements that are inside
> the main XIncluded element? And what about nested XIncludes?

Hm... For that, you could suggest a prefix attribute, where said
prefix is prepended to all ids in the XIncluded document. This prefix
would compound with nesting. On the other hand, you could dig yourself
into a huge, terrible hole using that technique.

> Personally I haven't had a lot of issues with XIncludes and IDs. Usually if I give something an ID, it's because
> it's unique, and therefore I'm unlikely to include it twice in the same document.

Usually that's true for larger cunks, but it wouldn't be in the case
when using XPointer to include small texty bits instead of entities
(say, for example, the menu paths Jim stated in the email at the top
of this thread). Those elements will need an ID just so you can grab
them, and they will be included in the document multiple times. I
guess that's moot if we generally agree that's not a good use case for
XInclude, though.

-Sam