Talk:Transclusion

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Object linking?

Is transclusion different from Microsoft's Object Linking?

Object linking and embedding (OLE) is a software component technology that enables, for example, a piece of a graphical user interface to be reused within another context. A text field could also be reused of course, yielding transclusion. But the aims of "plain old transclusion" concerns text only and focus on perceived usage, not specific technologies Nixdorf 08:14, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

And that comes after CORBA which in turn is based on Multics technology. So it's been around for a very very long time. And the terminology object linking is universal. This transclusion nonsense is just that - nonsense.

"Atomism" section

I found the following confusing:

For example, the following formulations, often found in written linear prose, are not possible... et seq.

The understanding at which I arrived after reading the whole section was that they would not (or, more consistent with the phrase "not possible", could not) appear in text written in atomic fashion, because they were examples of the previously-mentioned interference between sections, and thus counterexamples to the principle of atomicity (which is an attribute or characterization, as opposed to atomism, which is a metaphysical belief).

Initially, however, I was led to believe that the author was trying to illustrate, perhaps, a sequence of statements that were logically incompatible, rather than a set of examples of relative positional references that were subject to being invalidated by changes outside the section in which they appeared. This particular impression may have been unique to me, due to my particular thinking patterns and prejudices, and failure to consider fully the preceding content, but "not possible" seemed to divorce the list from the earlier context, so I was already building a new one, expecting it to be tied in later.

If my current understanding of the section is correct, then, I believe it should be re-titled "Atomicity" and the words "are not possible" above replaced with something more likely to evoke that understanding, such as:

are not acceptable (though this value judgement seems less specific to the context, so that it may seem to imply other, context-independent reasons to reject them)
are problematic (while this is not much more specific, it seems more natural to infer the context of sections interfering with one another. Perhaps adding in this way would help)
are not compatible with atomic composition (more explicit, but refers to a concept not yet fully developed)
are examples of non-atomic composition (likewise)
may be invalid if sections of a document are rearranged (my favorite, after "problematic", I think)
specify the locations of other sections that must be corrected if the locations change (too wordy; explains too much of what they do and too little of how they illustrate a problem in this context)

--Brianmthomas 16:21, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This passage:

Of course, one solution would be to make all such verbal references into links themselves.

I don't quite get it. What does this mean? Nixdorf 22:04, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Media wiki transclusion?

Why is there nothing here about Wikipedia's own transclusion? I know it exists, I saw it on the help pages, but I have not found any detailed explanation of it (when it is updated, which parts are used, etc.) Now, there may be this fabled page somewhere, but my point is that this page is the most logical place to look for it, and there is nothing here. Any suggestions?

See the last link.--Patrick 12:34, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Wikipedia page :), and it would be very nice if this page and it were properly integrated: this page could deal with Ted a little better, and the WikiPedia page certainly should mention him. KenThomas 06:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a Ted Nelson memorial or a Transclusion wiki??

WE CAN DROP section "Publications", ok?

And include, for example, links to Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits.

"Server-side Transclusion" Section

The lead in here, "Transclusion can also be accomplished on the server side..." seems to undersell server-side transclusion. Although iframes and objects do allow for transclusion, they are very rarely used in comparison to server-side includes. Almost every page out there uses some form of server side transclusion, including the very few that also use client side transclusion.

I think there are two major reasons for this...

One reason that server-side rather than client-side transclusion is generally preferrable is that it isolates the complexity of integration to the server, where it can be solved once and used by a multitude of diverse clients. It is true that server technology changes and advances as fast as client technology. However, a publisher will always have more control over their own servers than over their constellation of clients.

Another somewhat more subtle advantage is transaction cost. Unless a piece of data is relatively large, it is cheaper from a communications point of view to bundle it with other small pieces of data into a single transaction. So having clients pull HTML pages, then pull the images works very well. However, having the client pull a master document, then a lots of little pieces of text from different locations would be very slow. Doing the same thing from the server, where the bandwidth and processing power is much larger, and where the consolidated pages can be cached rather than built every time they are requested, provides a much better experience for the user.

So, server-side transclusion is generally better in both content integration and network performance. I think this is why server-side transclusion is unbiquitous, and transclusion can also be accomplished on the client side.

Could be wrong, though. That's why this is in the Talk rather than the article...

JohnsonDavis 15:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

minor comment: What does "recently" mean?

Where it says

 Nelson has recently delivered [...] the Little Transquoter

shouldn't the word "recently" be followed by a date? Or at least a year? Just a suggestion. Mike Schwartz (talk) 22:27, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS: This also applies to the phrase "At present" in the statement

"At present, transclusion in HTML is somewhat limited [...]"

in the "Use on the Web" section, of the article, under "in HTML".

Shouldn't that also have some "as of" time stamp? (at least a year?).

(PS added by Mike Schwartz, 22:35, 27 May 2008 (UTC))

Minor edit; & internal link: out of date.

At the first line of the article (or 2nd one; today) :

It is a feature of substitution templates.

It must say (today):

It is a feature of substitution templates.

There's no problems with the former (it takes us to the beggining of the article), but you think the LINK is desorienting yourself. Cfr: (actual) Contents, I write them down, now (here) !

1 Template Uses 
1.1 Effective separation 
1.2 Flexible presentation 
1.3 Reusability 
1.3.1 Open source templates 
2 Notes and references 
3 See also 
3.1 Examples 
4 External links

You can see, it's not like the older one was: Web template#Simple substitution templates ! Ciao! --PLA y Grande Covián (talk) 10:50, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a common concept

This concept, although the technical term is one thing, has other terms that you can search on when looking it up in various contexts.

see e.g., "drupal transclusion" "embedded content" http://drupal.org/project/node_embed dr.ef.tymac (talk) 20:44, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of the word?

There is no mention of whether the term transclusion is a portmanteau, perhaps of the words transfer and inclusion. Does anyone know the actual origin/roots of the word? — Loadmaster (talk) 15:41, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Examples

Shouldn't HTML frames and Mediawiki templates be mentioned? --Error (talk) 01:37, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing to do with "computer "science"

The article starts with "in computer science", but even if this made up term was a real word, it still has nothing whatsoever to do with "computer science".

Regardless of that, I think the article should be deleted. The concept being described here is no different from the concept of "inclusion". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.6.177.154 (talk) 03:47, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

correction needed

The article currently says:

"Ted Nelson coined the term for his 1980 nonlinear book Literary Machines, but the idea of master copy and occurrences was applied 17 years before, in Sketchpad."

Ted Nelson did coin the term. His description of it in Literary Machines is not his first description of it. He certainly described it in his 1974 work Computer Lib. Computer Lib covers Sutherland's work, and I am sure that Nelson would have properly credited Sutherland, if Sutherland had coined the term.

I knew Nelson, decades ago. My recollection was that most or all of the key terms he coined were in his senior honors thesis, when he graduated from Swarthmore College, in 1959 - ie four years before Sutherland's Sketchpad. Geo Swan (talk) 18:22, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

HTTP is not a means of transclusion

"HTTP, as a transmission protocol, has rudimentary support for transclusion via byte serving: specifying a byte range in an HTTP request message." Has anybody ever done this? I wouldn't think so, it should be removed.

J12t (talk) 23:32, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List of software?

I know that some editors hate lists for some reason, and that there's a bit of a list in the article regarding CS-specific tools, but a more general list of software this feature could be helpful/informative. I'm specifically thinking of desktop publishing software. For instance I know FrameMaker and OpenOffice both support this (or have in the past). 73.4.237.111 (talk) 19:04, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]