Can I use entities and xincludes in the same XML file?
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:43 pm
Hi,
I believe it is technically feasible for me to use entities and xincludes in the same XML file. But I believe it is not considered good practice. I'm wondering if anyone could suggest a more orthodox way of doing what I am doing.
I'm working in DocBook 5.0, using a heavily customized XSLT to output a few different formats. We use Subversion to edit our XML across various machines/locations, and the project file with project transformation scenarios to keep everyone on the same page.
Most of my editors and writers are not highly technical, so I am trying to keep the XML as easy to work with as possible.
I use xinclude to separate my book projects into multiple files (chapters, usually), and this works fine.
But I have a series of special characters that I prefer to keep as codes so as to avoid ambiguity in editorial work. For example, I was using – and — in my XML because when using the actual em-dash and en-dash characters, it's hard to tell them apart. To help my editors, I've created a series of easy-to-read entities to replace those codes: &enDash; and &emDash, among others. I put them in an external entities file and pull them into the XML.
My files all start generally like this:
So I'm using both entities and xincludes. My transforms seem to work fine, and my editors seem happy. Is there a problem here I should be watching for? Is there a simpler way to do what I am doing here that doesn't mix the two methods?
Thanks.
I believe it is technically feasible for me to use entities and xincludes in the same XML file. But I believe it is not considered good practice. I'm wondering if anyone could suggest a more orthodox way of doing what I am doing.
I'm working in DocBook 5.0, using a heavily customized XSLT to output a few different formats. We use Subversion to edit our XML across various machines/locations, and the project file with project transformation scenarios to keep everyone on the same page.
Most of my editors and writers are not highly technical, so I am trying to keep the XML as easy to work with as possible.
I use xinclude to separate my book projects into multiple files (chapters, usually), and this works fine.
But I have a series of special characters that I prefer to keep as codes so as to avoid ambiguity in editorial work. For example, I was using – and — in my XML because when using the actual em-dash and en-dash characters, it's hard to tell them apart. To help my editors, I've created a series of easy-to-read entities to replace those codes: &enDash; and &emDash, among others. I put them in an external entities file and pull them into the XML.
My files all start generally like this:
Code: Select all
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?oxygen RNGSchema="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/5.0/rng/docbookxi.rng" type="xml"?>
<!DOCTYPE book [
<!ENTITY % entities SYSTEM "utilities/entities/entities.ent">
%entities;
]>
<book xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" version="5.0" xml:id="book">Thanks.