Re: Using dh for debian-policy packaging

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> writes:

> Something else that might be worth considering is switching the debconf
> inclusions via ENTITY into proper XInclude's, like I did with the
> upgrading checklist. I think these would make the markup more clear.

I looked at doing this, but the problem with XInclude is that it requires
the included document be a correctly-formed DocBook document in its own
right.  The debconf specification uses includes to separate out tables and
lists, rather than full document sections (and separating out full
document sections wouldn't really achieve the modularity that it's trying
for).

This means, insofar as I understand DocBook XML, that to use XInclude one
would have to add some unused wrapping around each include file to make it
into a fake document and then use xpointer to pull out just the part of
interest, and that all looked awkward and confusing compared to just
continuing to use system entities.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>