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A standard approach to glueing together reusable XML fragments in prose?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: A standard approach to glueing together reusable XML fragments in prose?
• From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
• Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 12:34:42 -0400
• Organization: The MITRE Corporation

Hi Folks,

I am working with some people who wish to migrate from an
all-prose format to a prose-plus-reusable-XML-fragments
format.

They have some data in prose that is useable in many contexts.  They
want to break out that reusable data  into XML fragments.  However,
they want to continue to provide the prose style.

For example, consider this prose data:

<para>The city of Miami, Florida (pop. 1, 234,000) is a sprawling city
with many attractions.  Miami Beach is a popular attraction.  The
spring tide is ... The neap tide is ... </para>

Examining this prose we can extract reusable info about the city of
Miami:

<City id="Miami">
    <state>Florida</state>
    <population>1,234,000</population>
</City>

We can also extract reusable info about tide data on Miami Beach:

<TideData id="MiamiBeachTides">
    <springTide>...</springTide>
    <neapTide>...</neapTide>
</TideData>

The problem now is to create a framework which allows the prose
to bring-together the independent, reusable XML components.
Conceptually, what is desired is a "glue framework" like this:

<para>The <ref href="Miami.xml"> is a sprawling city with
many attractions.  Miami Beach is a popular attraction.  The
tides are <ref href="MiamiBeachTides.xml"><para>

Thus, the prose is "glueing" together the XML fragments.

Is this a problem that you have experience with?  What  "glue
framework" have you used?  What strategy did you use to merge
the XML fragments with the prose?  Is there is a standard way
of combining semi-structured data with structured data?
/Roger

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