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Re: Infoset chewing gum (was Re: linking, 80/20)

• To: Erik Wilde <net.dret@d...>
• Subject: Re: Infoset chewing gum (was Re: linking, 80/20)
• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 14:05:42 -0700
• Cc: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>, xml-dev@l...
• References: <r01050300-1015-DA98C47CB39E11D69F470003937A08C2@[192.168.124.21]> <3D6138CA.8040801@d...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.1b) Gecko/20020722

Erik Wilde wrote:

> maybe that's the point. i don't have a markup problem. the problem is 
> that some useful semantics (hyperlinking) are being viewed as if they 
> were tied to markup (which they currently are because xlink 1.0 only 
> defines markup). however, the semantics should be defined somewhere 
> else, and then people could choose whatever markup they like

This is a popular view, which goes on to complain about the fact that 
the definition of XML 1.0 was purely syntactical and wish that the data 
model had come first, with lots of syntax choices.  This point of view 
is wrong.  XML maximizes interoperability by being defined at the syntax 
level.  This was a deliberate choice based on a huge amount of experience.

XLink's definition is very highly interoperable.  Others are arguing 
that the penalty of having to use namespaces is too high, or that the 
semantics of actuate are either too little or too much, or that there is 
no built-in syntax remapping to do retroactive support of existing 
hypertext dialects.  All these arguments are worth having.  But bear in 
mind that every time you move your representation away from the 
syntactic level, you pay a severe interoperability price.  Maybe in the 
case of XLink the price is worth paying (I don't think so, but can see 
the other side of the argument). -Tim

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Infoset chewing gum (was Re: linking, 80/20)
    • From: Erik Wilde <net.dret@d...>

• References:
  • Infoset chewing gum (was Re: linking, 80/20)
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: Infoset chewing gum (was Re: linking, 80/20)
    • From: Erik Wilde <net.dret@d...>

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