assembly vs. XInclude

[Bob Stayton <bobs@sagehill.net>]

I'm following up on my action item to compare DocBook assembly to XInclude.

1.  <resource> @href is a URI, and allows for a fragment identifier to 
pull part of a document, similar to an ID reference in XInclude's @xpointer.

2.  <resource> does not support other xpointer schemes from XInclude, 
such as xpath.

3.  <resource> elements accept common DocBook attributes, including 
effectivity, revisionflag, etc, but XInclude elements do not.

4.  In assembly, transformations on incoming content are possible with 
assembly <transformation> element.  XInclude 1.1 allows for @parse to be 
other than "xml" or "text", but other values are implementation-defined.

5.  The assembly <module> element's @renderas can rename a resource's 
root element, something XInclude cannot do.

6.  <module> element's <merge> child allows overriding of <info> 
elements in the resource, so can change <title>, etc.

7.  <module> element's @omittitles attribute allows titles to be omitted 
from the resource.

8.  <module> element's @contentonly can strip the wrapper element of the 
resource for insertion into a new element.

9.  <module> elements support effectivity attributes, XInclude element 
does not.


--
Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net