Re: Optional features considered harmful

> I think the problem here is the assumption that the browser _must_ expand
> the entity if it _can_ expand the entity. I advocate a different approach,
> where a browser would have "transclude-if-convenient" semantics. So an
> external entity reference might be rendered as an expandable link, like the
> links in the old OWL product. The browser could automatically follow small
> external entities, and link-ify large ones. This behavior is incompatible
> with validation, but a non-validating parser would not care about this.

I like this approach. The only problem with it that I can see is that
you would have to parse the external piece in order to get the formatting
straight since you don't know what the missing siblings/children are.
There is also the issue of missing IDs.

I really don't see any significant difference between entities and other
forms of transclusion--the semantics are the same only the syntax is
different.

bob