[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: [Somewhat Offtopic] Transclusion

• From: John Cowan <cowan@l...>
• To: XML Dev <xml-dev@i...>
• Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 16:31:34 -0400

Chris Maden wrote:

> The best way to use transclusion for
> reuse, though, is with entities.  If something's part of your
> document, make it so.  Since a system identifier in XML is a URI, and
> a URI can include a fragment, and that fragment can be an XPointer,
> there's really no limitation on what an entity can be.

Au contraire, hélas!  XML spec section 5.2:

# The SystemLiteral [specified for an external entity] is called the
# entity's system identifier. It is a URI, which may be used to retrieve
# the entity. Note that the hash mark (#) and fragment identifier
# frequently used with URIs are not, formally, part of the URI itself;
# an XML processor may signal an error if a fragment identifier is given
# as part of a system identifier.

"May", of course, is not synonymous with "must", but one cannot count
on reliable transclusion of document parts in this way.  XLink
does allow it.

> The reason Steve and I proposed always
> distinguishing transclusion is that otherwise, there will be too much
> fear of intellectual property theft, and the Web could stagnate.
> Theft is always a possibility (copy and paste always works), but it
> shouldn't be made easy.

An essential part of Xanadu, which the WWW does not have, was a chargeback
mechanism, whereby the original author of a transcluded document is
paid pro rata when someone buys the right to read the transcluding
document.

This is related to the "mechanical licensing" policy for sound
recordings: one may always, on payment of compensation, play someone
else's copyrighted sound recording even without permission.
A variety of clearinghouses are used to implement this policy.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@c...
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i...
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)

• References:
  • Re: [Somewhat Offtopic] Transclusion
    • From: Chris Maden <crism@o...>

• Prev by Date: Re: Entities in XSchema
• Next by Date: 10 big lies (was RE: draft-whitehead-mime-xml-04)
• Previous by thread: Re: [Somewhat Offtopic] Transclusion
• Next by thread: Re: Entities in XSchema - moving toward a processing model
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread