Transclusion — rendering multiple HTML fragments in a document

Ted Nelson coined the term in his book Literary Machines. See: notes / Literary Machines.

He defines transclusion as “…the same content knowably in more than one place”. That general definition seems to fit my use case. See below.

The problem I’m wanting to solve

Hypertext is a great idea, but difficult (at least for me) to read.

The problem I’m trying to solve. The dependence on links makes it difficult to maintain context. Taking the first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory as an example:

Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics . It focuses on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions .

In a note taking system, I’m wanting to be able to jot down multiple notes related to a subject, then be able to view a selection of those notes (or sections of those notes) in a single document. Ideally ordered sequences of notes could be saved as a new document.

Is what I’m wanting to do transclusion?

This may or may not be transclusion: the inclusion of part or all of an electronic document into one or more other documents by reference via hypertext….The result of transclusion is a single integrated document made of parts assembled dynamically from separate sources, possibly stored on different computers in disparate places.¹

Whether or not what I’m proposing is technically transclusion seems to depend on whether or not the document parts are referenced via hypertext.

“Updates or corrects to a resource are then reflected in any referencing documents.”²

Writing transclusive text

Transclusive is a made-up (by me) word.

“Transclusion works better when transcluded sections of text are self-contained.”³ So that meaning is independent of context. For example, avoid statements like “as noted in the previous section.” But maybe context could be provided with a link, for example as noted in the previous section.

Partial implementations

• Roam Research and Logseq allow block-level transclusion. You can embed sections from notes in a note.
• Notion: synced blocks (similar to Roam Research?)
• Obsidian: templates
• https://notes.andymatuschak.org/ : I like this, but things are moving too fast on the screen.
• https://tiddlywiki.com/ : “a unique non-linear notebook for capturing, organising and sharing complex information”

References

Wikipedia contributors, “Transclusion,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transclusion&oldid=1325468656 (accessed January 6, 2026).