Using XInclude

[Charles Palmer <ch...@dspdesign.com>]

Team

Does anyone know how XIncludes be made to work with Forrest?

This appears to be the only way that XMLMind (the editor I am using)  can specify references to external files and constants, for substituting desired text for a placeholder.

There is an entry here: http://forrest.apache.org/changes.html that says this:

Added XInclude capability to the documents. Remember to disable validations for files with xincludes as the xinclude is not performed during validation. (NKB)

I added a new file (xi.xml) to the standard forrest seed files (in src/documentation/content/xdocs/samples/) , with this snippet:

<p>
  <xi:include href="test.xml" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" >
    <xi:fallback>
      If you see this, the include has failed.
    </xi:fallback>
  </xi:include>
</p>

I also disabled validation in forrest.properties. Something of the xi process is working, because I get the fallback message printed. (In addition, forrest reports an error: "X [0]  samples/xi.pdf   BROKEN: java.lang.ClassCastException" - and no pdf is created)

I've tried a number of variations in terms of placing test.xml in different places, referring to it with different hrefs, but no luck.

Would it be possible for somone to correct my sample, and provide a suitable test.xml file and tell me where to put it, so I can make this example work. (I'll do a little write-up for the documentation project in exchange!)

Also - for this example I added an entry in forrest.properties: 
forrest.validate=false

I assume this is disabling all validation. How can I disable validation selectively? 

Would it be a good idea to allow xi:include in the future?

Thanks - Charles