Ludovic: Thanks for your explanation, which was very helpful; sorry I haven't replied before this. Looking at the source, it was clear that one directive turned on a "pre" flag and the other didn't, but the implications of this which you explained had not occurred to me, especially since the $xwiki methods that implement them also allowed a flag of the same type. However, I am already using #includeMacros, as I mentioned, so unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem. I had the issues confused in my mind, but it now appears that it doesn't have to do with which directive I use to include it, because it isn't a question of whether the included content is rendered before or after inclusion, but whether a macro definition file ever loads. Our wiki is configured as by default up to this point - i.e. the "view" action calls $xwiki.includeForm("$menudoc", false), which (If I understand it correctly) effectively includes the content of $menudoc (which is XWiki.Menu in our case) WITHOUT any interpretation. Our copy of XWiki.Menu has been modified to use #includeTopic("Main.FoldingMenu") (causing Main.FoldingMenu to be interpreted in a separate context BEFORE being inserted into the including document -- correct?). Main.FoldingMenu uses #includeMacros("Main.MenuMacro") and, after setting up the necessary stylesheets and javascript functions, calls the one macro defined in it, #doMenu, on $doc, where the top-level menu entry objects reside. When the wiki is started, the #includeMacros directive apparently fails, because the name "doMenu" is not the name of a macro definition in the context when called, so that instead of executing the macro, Velocity simply renders it as #doMenu(com.xpn.xwiki.api.Document@7a3a97). So the content of the menu document is being rendered (witness the expansion of its single argument, which was $doc), but at the time that it is, the macro definition was not in the context. After some activity ranging from just opening Main.FoldingMenu as a regular document (calling the "view" action on it) to opening it in the editor to actually saving a new version of it, the macro document finally loads and the macro executes. Friday (while I was out, naturally), none of that worked for the people who were here and they replaced it with a hard-coded list. First, it appears that I need to check the logs to see whether there was some failure in the loading of the macro document and troubleshoot that. It may be that a permission problem exists, though I doubt that this could have been the problem - first, every time the problem was corrected, the person who seems to have fixed the problem also experienced it first, and second, the history of the menu document shows that they apparently tried some manipulations of this sort without effect. Neither of these discounts the idea, of course, so neither will I, but I'm not hopeful. Meanwhile, has anyone any ideas? I will, of course, try adding the macro definition to macros.vm, but I suspect that this would only decrease the incidence of the problem rather than eliminating it. It happens seldom enough that it's hard to reproduce as it is, and can't be done at all without restarting the wiki, which is getting to be fairly popular. For one thing, is there a programmatic way to know when an #include directive fails, or do I have to examine the logs? I wouldn't argue for muddying a template language with such a feature, certainly, but if there's some background magic available to administrative users for troubleshooting purposes, it could be useful. I think there's probably still a little too much that needs server administrator access to troubleshoot. brain[sic] -----Original Message----- From: Ludovic Dubost [mailto:ludovic@xwiki.com] Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 8:48 AM To: xwiki-users(a)objectweb.org Subject: Re: [xwiki-users] #include<what?> Hi, #includeTopic -> includes and executes any code in the context of the INCLUDED document (variables are the one from the included document) #includeForm -> includes and executres any code in the context of the INCLUDING document (variables are the one from the including document) #includeMacros -> used to embed macros to solve the problem that you are having Another way to solve it is to put your macro in /templates/macros.vm and restart XWiki. This will make your macro global. It's actually better for performance. Ludovic THOMAS, BRIAN M (SBCSI) a écrit : -- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic