XInclude in XML Calabash

So.

I’m working through the XInclude 1.0/1.1 test suite and I’ve discovered that
my implementation of XInclude is … buggy.

Correct behavior for XInclude is that nested XInclude elements are expanded
before evaluating fragids. So you can say

  <xi:include href="book.xml" xpointer="id(chapter1)"/>

and it works even if the xml:id ‘chapter1’ is “behind” an xi:include
element in book.xml.

Fair enough.

Unfortunately, fixing that bug has a consequence. Attribute types
defined by DTD validation are lost in the expanded document. What this
means in practice is that if you’re using DTD validation to assign ID
types *and* using fragids to point to those IDs, it doesn’t work. (It
does work if you name your ID attributes xml:id, which I hope you all
do.)

I don’t know how to fix this. It’s clear from the Saxonica API docs
that NodeInfo.getSchemaType() doesn’t return types declared with DTD
fragments. In theory, I could use NodeInfo.getTypeAnnotation() to find
out, but the values I get back from that API don’t have the
IS_DTD_TYPE bit set even when the type comes from the DTD. (All of
this despite the fact that in the parsed document, before I copy it,
the XPath id() function does work.)

I suppose I should try construct a test case and report the bug but
that’s not going to be useful today. And even if I could get the DTD
type, it’s entirely unclear that I could construct a new tree with
that type, so I’m not sure it’d help.

On the whole, I think the best choice is to fix the “nested includes”
bug and just accept that DTD-based ID attribute types won’t work.
But how painful is that going to be for users, I wonder?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh
Lead Engineer
MarkLogic Corporation
Phone: +1 512 761 6676
www.marklogic.com