RE: [docbook-apps] Alternative to entities?

["Peter Ring" <PRI at magnus dot dk>]

Rather than using shorthand pointers (i.e. IDs), you could use a child sequence

  xpointer=element(/1/2/3)

or

  xpointer=element(/these/those/27)

i.e., avoid having ID attributes in the elements included.

It is not too pretty, I know. It would be nice if you could declare those ID attributes *not* to be ID attributes *after* inclusion. That could be done in a two-step process:

1. run the the xinclude process with a schema/DTD that declare attributes to be IDs
2. further processing without schema/DTD or with one that declares those attributes to be CDATA

I don't know how that could be done for XXE. You could possibly catch those specific warnings, or lobby for making those warnings optionable.

kind regards
Peter Ring

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gurra Green [mailto:gurra_green@hotmail.com]
> Sent: 24. januar 2005 12:24
> To: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [docbook-apps] Alternative to entities?
> 
> 
> 
> Bringing up a thread from last week...
> 
> I've introduced the XInclude mechanism as a way of replacing 
> entities among 
> my collueages. I have collected a number of phrases in a file 
> constant_strings.xml and references them with
> 
> <xi:include
>         href="../common_chapters/constant_strings.xml"
> 	xpointer="def_product_name"
>         xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
> />
> 
> Now the documents do not validate anymore;
> ../common_chapters/constant_strings.xml:29: element phrase: 
> validity error : 
> ID def_product_name already defined
> 
> The text above is from xmllint which we run as a step in the 
> daily builds of 
> .pdf. The message will break the build. A similar message is 
> written in 
> XMLMind which has a validation tab in the GUI.
> According to the XMLMind tutorial already mentioned in this 
> thread the 
> warning:
> "You can safely ignore this warning. It is reported when a 
> reference to an 
> external element has been pasted several times in the same modular 
> document."
> 
> The daily build problem can possibly be avoided by some 
> wrapper between the 
> gnumake and xmllint, filtering the message (although I am NOT 
> found of such 
> solution) but the interactive part of the problem still 
> remains; having 200 
> messages that always should be ignored will inevitablely make 
> people stop 
> looking at the warning messages, and real problems will pass through.
> 
> Anybody having any ideas on this? At the moment I think we'll 
> have to back 
> on the XInclude way of solving my root problem and use the 
> sed solution 
> outside of the DocBook knowledge, but thtere might be 
> something else to do?
> 
>    /Gurra
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >From: "Peter Ring" <PRI@magnus.dk>
> >To: "Jirka Kosek" <jirka@kosek.cz>,<davep@dpawson.co.uk>
> >CC: "Gurra Green" <gurra_green@hotmail.com>,"Docbook-Apps" 
> ><docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org>
> >Subject: RE: [docbook-apps] Alternative to entities?
> >Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 14:32:51 +0100
> >
> >Give it a try. In my experience, XInclude is well integrated in XXE.
> >
> >First, on the Options | Edit tab, you'd have selected Type 
> of document 
> >reference: 'XInclude' or 'Entity when possible, XInclude otherwise'.
> >
> >Then you could go along like this:
> >1) open both entities.xml and the document that you are authoring
> >2) select the element in entities.xml that you want to reference
> >3) select Edit | Document Reference | Copy as Reference or type 
> >Ctrl+Shift+C
> >4a) to insert an inline element, set the insertion point in 
> your document 
> >and type Ctrl+V
> >4b) to insert a block element, set the insertion point in 
> your document and 
> >type Ctrl+U (paste before) or Ctrl+W (paste after).
> >
> >There's a tutorial [1].
> >
> >The reference could look like this
> >
> >     <xi:include href="entties.xml" 
> >xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
> >                 xpointer="productname" />
> >
> >or
> >
> >     <xi:include href="entties.xml" 
> >xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
> >                 xpointer="element(productname)" />
> >
> >or
> >
> >     <xi:include href="entties.xml" 
> >xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
> >                 xpointer="xpointer(id('productname'))" />
> >
> >or
> >
> >     <xi:include href="entties.xml" 
> >xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
> >                 xpointer="element(/1/2/3)" />
> >
> >AFAIK, there's a couple of limitations. Not all off the 
> XPointer scheme is 
> >supported; the XPointer expression must yield a result 
> infoset with one 
> >node; and one particular feature that I miss
> >
> >     <xi:include href="some-source-code-or-xml-file" 
> >xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
> >                 parse="text">
> >
> >XXE will quote the included file as it is supposed to, but 
> the reference 
> >will be gone, replaced by the quoted content of the included file.
> >
> >[1] http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/tutorial.html#id.s2
> >
> >kind regards
> >Peter Ring
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Jirka Kosek [mailto:jirka@kosek.cz]
> > > Sent: 17. januar 2005 19:52
> > > To: davep@dpawson.co.uk
> > > Cc: Gurra Green; Docbook-Apps
> > > Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Alternative to entities?
> > >
> > >
> > > Dave Pawson wrote:
> > >
> > > > Not speaking from experience.
> > > >
> > > > If an xinclude aware processor is used,
> > > > could that stand in for XML entities Jirka?
> > >
> > > Yep, you can use something like
> > >
> > > <xi:include href="entities.xml#productname"/>
> > >
> > > to pull element from external file entities.xml:
> > >
> > > <root>
> > >    <phrase xml:id="productname">SuperSoft v3.5</phrase>
> > >    ...
> > > </root>
> > >
> > > But as you can see XInclude is quite verbose in this case 
> and I'm not
> > > sure whether XXE can deal with such XIncludes.
> > >
> > > --
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >    Jirka Kosek     e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz     http://www.kosek.cz
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >    Profesionální ¹kolení a poradenství v oblasti technologií XML.
> > >       Podívejte se na ná¹ novì spu¹tìný web http://DocBook.cz
> > >         Podrobný pøehled ¹kolení http://xmlguru.cz/skoleni/
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > >
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Want to block unwanted pop-ups? Download the free MSN Toolbar now!  
> http://toolbar.msn.co.uk/
> 
>