The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. XInclude 1.0 provides a method for merging multiple XML documents into a single composite document. XInclude 1.0 is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents. This function is important for software applications that need to easily combine XML documents. XInclude 1.0 can be used in environments without DTD (Document Type Definition) support, more common since the adoption of XML schemas. Unlike the mechanism used in DTDs, i.e. XML external entities, XInclude gives the content author a fallback mechanism in cases where the external document cannot be retrieved, for whatever reason. XInclude allows an application to leverage the syntax in existing XML constructs – elements, attributes, and URI references. XInclude allows an author to choose how to include another XML document in new composite content – either as markup or text. In addition, no XML entity declarations, which were required in the older method when using DTDs, are required for XInclude. XInclude 1.0 can be used with any version of XML, as well as other existing XML-related specifications, such as the XML-family components XML Schema and XSLT, as well as with XML applications such as the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and VoiceXML 2.0. XInclude 1.0 also takes advantage of the XPointer Framework and can be used to include sub-resources, such as fragments of XML documents, that are identified by a separate xpointer attribute. www.w3.org