User Guide : transclusion


Publishing / FTX / User Guide / transclusion

Page transclusion: Including other pages

The FTX document format has a very special and almost magical content-inclusion feature: not only can you include images and news articles in the pages you create, but you can also include whole other pages in your pages!

In fact, doing this is extremely simple: Where you would normally link to a page using single angle brackets <>:

<example>

instead use double angle brackets <<>>:

<<example>>

It’s a little bit like embedding an image, except that the page you embed must be:

Local to www.lugnet.com, and
Written as an FTX document

Here is how the two lines above compare. First the regular link:

example

and now the included page:

This is a very short example page. Its only purpose is to be transcluded by another page. OK, this is the end of the page. Bye!

All right, now you’re back to the regular page. The small paragraph above is not truly part of the page you’re viewing, but actually a copy of a different page (click the link that says “example” or the little square box on the right to view that page all by itself).

Now here are a couple “real” examples, each pulling many separate pages together into one big page:

“Transclusion?”

Transclusion is a word coined by Project Xanadu® visionary Ted Nelson, who also coined the word Hypertext in 1963. Transclusion (also called transquoting) of materials is a form of transpublishing in which materials from one or more original sources are used or assembled at another location to make a new source.

Transclusion of text (or of a page) is different from inclusion of text (or of a page). Inclusion implies actually including a copy of the source material, while transclusion implies storing only a reference to it and assembling a copy of it only when it needs to be viewed.

Thus, when you transclude FTX pages, any changes made to the page referenced will automatically reflect in the page referencing it as well. (If you need to “lock in” to a particular historical revision of some FTX page, there is actually a way to do that, but it is beyond the scope of this tutorial.)

Note: When you transclude someone else’s FTX page on LUGNET, the copyright notice at the bottom of the webpage changes to include the author whose page you are transcluding.

All text, images, or trademarks in this document are the intellectual property of their respective owners.