The parse attribute

parse="xml"

The resource must be parsed as XML and the infosets merged. This is the default.

parse="text"

The resource must be treated as pure text and inserted as a text node. When serialized, this means that characters like < will change to < and so forth.

<slide xmlns:xinclude="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
  <title>The href attribute</title>
  
<ul>
  <li>Identifies the document to be included with a URI</li>
  <li>The document at the URI replaces the <code>include</code> 
      element in the including document</li>
  <li>The <code>xinclude</code> prefix is bound to the http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude
  namespace URI. 
  </li>
</ul>  

<pre><code><xinclude:include parse="text" href="processing_xml_with_java.xml"/>
</code></pre>
        
  <description>
      A slide from Elliotte Rusty Harold's Bleeding Edge of XML presentation at
      <host_ref/>, <date_ref/>
    </description>
  <last_modified>October 26, 2000</last_modified>
</slide>