Hi,
I would suggest to use XInclude with XPointer that can point to a specific
<para>, <phrase>, or any other elements written somewhere else:
<refsection>
<title>Description</title>
<xi:include href="../math/alttex.xml"
xpointer="xpointer(id('pi-texmath-user'))"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"; />
</refsection>
You can aways put identifiers in the blocks often used and refer to them,
or use xpointer in a more versatile way. Example taken from
https://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xptr:
xpointer(id('list37')/item[1]/range-to(following-sibling::item[2]))
Regards,
BG
On Mon, 03 Oct 2016 18:33:47 +0200, Bob McIlvride
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear friends,
We've been working on converting our multiple-book, multiple-set
documentation system from Docbook SGML >4.1 to Docbook XML 5.0. So far,
with some help from this list (Bob Stayton in particular), things have
been >going well. Now a question has come up for which we again ask
your advice.
We begin our conversion process (SGML 4.1 to XML 4.5) in our current
document processing system in Linux, >using osx, and then complete it
(XML 4.5 to XML 5.0) in oXygen in Windows, our new system for
maintaining >the source documents in XML, and producing output.
In SGML, we made extensive use of text entities to create replaceable
text strings, as well as SYSTEM entities >to organize and replicate
larger sections of text such as chapters and sections of books. Taking
advantage of >SGML's flexibility, we were able to insert identical
blocks of text into different places in a single book, or in >different
books of a set.
For example, with this markup for an appendix in, say, Book 1:
<appendix id="book1-ax-gpl">
&app-gpl;
</appendix>
and this entity declaration:
<!entity app-gpl SYSTEM "app-gpl.sgml">
we were able to include the text of the GNU General Public License in a
"GPL" appendix. The entity &app-gpl; >points to a file in a common
directory that contains all of the text of the appendix except for the
<appendix></>appendix> markup. When the entity gets resolved, the
correct, marked up content of the appendix would be >included in the
ouput.
Using the ID in the <appendix> tag, we were able to create links within
Book 1 to the "GPL" appendix. For >Book 2, we would use an ID of
"book2-ax-gpl" for that tag, and so on for each book. In this way we
could >create a <set> of books in which the links of each book would go
to its own copy of the "GPL" appendix.
As I understand it, this was considered acceptable practise in SGML.
However, my reading of Bob Stayton's >book and the oXygen documentation
has led me to the conclusion that in Docbook XML this is not possible,
at >least not using xinclude. With xinclude each section of text in a
given document must have a unique ID, and >each section of text must be
completely valid in itself. We need to replicate identical chunks of
text in books >within a bookset, yet give each a unique ID. Because our
books were designed from the beginning with this >capability in mind, we
use it quite a bit, and would like to continue using this approach with
Docbook XML >5.0.
Faced with this challenge, we have tried taking the same approach in XML
as we were using in SGML, but >instead of using SYSTEM entities, we make
them text entities. That is, we take the contents of the file
app->gpl.sgml and copy it into the "" string for the text entity.
The good news is that the document validates and we get correct output.
However, on the back end it means >that instead of neat rows of pointers
to filenames, our entity declaration file is quite large, as it now
contains >all of the text and markup content of all of the common
files. So, the question we put to you is: Is this an >acceptable
approach (or the only approach) to the problem, or is there a
better/recommended alternative?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Best regards,
Bob
Bob McIlvride Communications Manager
Cogent Real-Time Systems Inc., a Skkynet company
T 1 905 702 7851 ext 103
cogent.ca
