XInclude namespace mappings

Here's an implementation experience that's causing me some small 
trouble. The issue occurs as an XInclude user rather than as an 
implementer of XInclude.

I have a DocBook document split into multiple chapters. I use XInclude 
to merge them. The final result should be valid according to the 
standard DocBook DTD, which doesn't know squat about namespaces or 
XInclude. However, the result isn't valid against the standard DocBook 
DTD because the merged document contains lots of 
xmlns:xinclude="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" attributes. e.g. what 
should be

<book>
...
</book>

is instead

<book xmlns:xinclude='http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude'>
...
</book>

This namespace declaration is no longer needed in the merged document, 
but it's there becuse it was in the original source documents.

I wonder if the XInclude namespace should be speciifcally excluded from the result infoset? Is there any plausible reason to keep it? 

This brings up another point: section 5.3 does not require in-scope namespaces or namespace declaration attribute properties of element information items to be provided. However, section 4.5.4, Namespace fixup, seems to require these properties. I'm not sure which section is in error or whether there's some tricky point here I'm not understanding that's allows them not to contradict each other. Clarification would be appreciated.


-- 
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ 
|           The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (IDG Books, 2001)             |
|             http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/              |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
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Received on Wednesday, 29 May 2002 21:24:40 UTC