Greetings,
I'm looking for best practice on how to modularize using xinclude and
access image files using imagedata/fileref.
I have a tree of resources, mostly various image files, such as scanned
documents.
These are in a rather large tree of folders based upon either a kind of
date/time of occurrence or by topic.
These need to be composed to tell a story.
The textual content, along with inclusion of images, is placed in docbook
xml files that are also scattered around the tree.
Some of the store line is time based and will have dcbkxml interspersed in
say the chronological folders.
So a given year story line dcbkxml will be xinclude'ing subfolder dcbkxml
files, which have textual components and imagedata stored in current
directory or sub*directories.
Other story lines are topical and span across the time line, hence the
dcbkxml will be in a Topic/subtopic folder, but needs access to image data
spread across the time line folders.
After various attempts, I had settled on simply setting the xml:base to be
the root location of the whole tree, with a path from the top of the
file-system hierarchy.
The enabled a simple referencing system:
- for xinclude/href the path simply specified the relative location
below the xml:base location,
- for imagedata/fileref the path likewise simply specified the relative
location below the xml:base location
It has been suggested that this is a less robust method, and one
alternative was to suggest setting a xml:base using relative paths.
At the time the method was being considered, the tree was not well defined,
and undergoing some changes.
To have used relative paths, e.g. xml:base="../../" would present problems
if a part of the tree needed to move.
To do a global change across xml files of a specified relative path from
the xml:base would be easy.
To do a global change across xml files of a specified relative path in the
form of "../../" would be problematic.
The downside of the this whole approach is the xml:base is in every
dcbkxml file, yet it is the same, so easy to change, i.e. global
replacement, should the root need to be relocated.
What is the best practice for managing this?
Best regards,
..Otto