A week ago I posted here by accident part of a private conversation (in Dutch) with Hans Hagen. I already apologized for this. On 15 Apr 2016, at 00:47, Mica Semrick > wrote: I'm interested in this thread too... But I'm american, so English only. I appreciate your understanding! From reactions I understood that other people are interested in this subject of \xmlinclude too, but at that moment I could not produce a coherent story. After having produced some minimal (1) working, (2) not working and (3) crashing examples, I dare hope that my contribution of these will be of some use. And perhaps they will spawn better suggestions and better understanding of what happens, because I must confess I am somewhat unsure with functional language behaviour, being raised with Assembler, Algol, Pascal, Fortran, and so on ;-) Find below my examples. One can call each of them by commenting out the \starthiding. The last one can be executed by removing the %%%%'s at the front of the offending statement. Again, I hope this post will be of some use. Hans van der Meer contents of file minimal-example.xml: Body of first note Body of second note Three exampel programs: \enabletrackers[lxml.loading,lxml.setups] \startbuffer[notes-xml] \stopbuffer \starthiding % Test #1 \startxmlsetups notes:setups \xmlsetsetup{#1}{*}{-} \xmlsetsetup{#1}{notes}{notes:*} \stopxmlsetups \xmlregisterdocumentsetup{notes}{notes:setups} \startxmlsetups notes:notes \xmlinclude{#1}{include}{file} \xmlshow{#1} ===> number of = \xmlcount{#1}{note} \stopxmlsetups \starttext Ok with \type{\xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{notes:notes}}\crlf \xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{notes:notes} \blank Not ok with \type{\xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{}}\crlf \xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{} \textrule{end of test \#1} \stoptext \stophiding \starthiding % Test #2 \startxmlsetups notes:setups \xmlsetsetup{#1}{*}{-} \xmlsetsetup{#1}{takenotes}{notes:*} \stopxmlsetups \xmlregisterdocumentsetup{notes}{notes:setups} \startxmlsetups notes:takenotes \xmlinclude{#1}{include}{file} \xmlshow{#1} ===> number of = \xmlcount{#1}{note} \stopxmlsetups \startxmlsetups notes:setups \xmlflush{#1} \stopxmlsetups \starttext Nothing with \type{\xmlprocessbuffer{takenotes}{notes-xml}{}}\crlf \xmlprocessbuffer{takenotes}{notes-xml}{} \blank Not ok with \type{\xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{}}\crlf \xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{} \blank Not ok with \type{\xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{notes:takenotes}}\crlf \xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{} \textrule{end of test \#2} \stoptext \stophiding %\starthiding % Test #3 \startxmlsetups notes:setups \xmlsetsetup{#1}{*}{-} \xmlsetsetup{#1}{notes}{notes:*} \stopxmlsetups \xmlregisterdocumentsetup{notes}{notes:setups} \startxmlsetups notes:notes \xmlfilter{#1}{takenotes/include/command(notes:include)} \xmlshow{#1} ===> number of = \xmlcount{#1}{note} \stopxmlsetups \startxmlsetups notes:include \writestatus{DEBUG}{enter notes: include file \xmlattribute{#1}{../include}{file}} \xmlinclude{#1}{../include}{file} \stopxmlsetups \starttext \type{\xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{notes:notes}} will crash %%%%\xmlprocessbuffer{notes}{notes-xml}{notes:notes}%%%% \crlf prints in the log: \crlf \type{DEBUG > enter notes: include file minimal-example.xml} \crlf \type{lxml > tex > including file 'minimal-example.xml'} \crlf \type{lua error ... attempt to index field 'settings' (a nil value) ...tail calls} \textrule{end of test \#3} \stoptext \stophiding