The W3C XML Core Working Group has announced the release of a last call working draft specification for XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0. The working draft document "specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML Infosets into a single composite Infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process is expressed in XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI References)." The working group invites comment on this specification during the last call review period which begins May 16, 2001 and ends June 5, 2001. According to background information supplied by Arnaud Le Hors and Paul Grosso (Chairs of the XML Core WG), the XML Core WG "is not aware of an issue with this WD document; the list of issues that have been raised and resolved while elaborating the specification can be found in the accompanying issues document."

From the last call working draft: "XInclude differs from the linking features described in the XML Linking Language (XLink) via a media-type specific (XML into XML) transformation; it defines a specific processing model for merging information sets. XInclude processing occurs at a low level, often by a generic XInclude processor which makes the resulting information set available to higher level applications... a number of differences between XInclude and XML external entities make them complementary technologies... XInclude does not define a mechanism for DTD validation of the resulting infoset... XInclude defines no relationship to the augmented infosets produced by applying an W3C XML Schema...Special-purpose inclusion mechanisms have been introduced into specific XML grammars. XInclude provides a generic mechanism for recognizing and processing inclusions, and as such can offer a simpler overall authoring experience, greater performance, and less code redundancy."

Bibliographic information: XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0. W3C Working Draft 16-May-2001. Edited by Jonathan Marsh (Microsoft) and David Orchard (Jamcracker). Latest version URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/.