DocBook 5: The Definitive Guide

Name

textdata — Pointer to external text data

Synopsis

textdata ::= info? ^{db.titleforbidden.info}

Attribute synopsis

Common attributes.

Additional attributes:

• encoding

• Each of:

  • format

  • Exactly one of:

    • fileref (anyURI)

    • entityref (ENTITY)

Required attributes are shown in bold.

Description

This element points to an external entity containing text to be inserted.

Note

Any markup in the text identified with textdata will be escaped. In other words, this element is for inserting things like program listings, not parts of an XML document. To break a document into separate physical files, use XInclude or external parsed entities.

Processing expectations

May be formatted inline or as a displayed block, depending on context.

There are two ways to provide content for textdata: entityref or fileref. It is best to use only one of these methods; however, if multiple sources are provided, entityref will be used in favor of fileref.

If the encoding is such that the processor will not be able to determine the encoding of the text, the encoding can be specified in the encoding attribute. For encodings registered (as charsets) with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, recommended best practice suggests that they be referred to using their registered names.

Attributes

Common attributes.

encoding

Identifies the encoding of the text in the external file

entityref

Identifies the location of the data by external identifier (entity name)

fileref

Identifies the location of the data by URI

format

Specifies the format of the data