1. A method for use in an electronic publishing system for generating pages on demand in response to a page request, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a page request to produce a page, including a page name; locating one or more elements associated with the page name, the elements for defining instructions for how to render the page; and determining whether the rendered page or elements of the page are to be cache primitives depending upon the value of at least one context specific variable associated with the page request.