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RE: XML, hypertext

• To: "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: XML, hypertext
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 09:32:03 -0500

For those who are understandably irritated by the increasing 
complexity of XML specifications, note where things start 
to become complex in each as one attempts to make a global 
network of resources *behave* as if it were a semi-normalized 
database.  Hypertext/hypermedia is an old old form of 
a database, and it isn't simple to take any abstract 
resource anywhere anytime with n representations per 
resource and make it accessible with the same kinds 
of unified views afforded by modern relational or 
even neo-modern object-oriented systems.  Trying to 
do that has resulted in much of the noted complexity.

Just understanding the implications of out-of-line 
extended locators that have to operate over multiple 
media types is daunting.  Let's see if this group 
can recreate Hytime without going into the same bogs, 
or if indeed, it turns out that what so many said 
was ugly turns out to be lack of comprehension of 
the bogs themselves.

This will be fun.

len


From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...]

I think it's reasonably clear that XLink isn't the only or most popular
answer to creating hypertext with XML.  Even apart from various
long-standing overlaps with RDF, it seems that there are a lot of other
options to consider.  (The "everything can have an href" notion also has
me thinking hard.)

Would it be worth having a Birds-of-a-Feather session at XML 2002?  Or
could some of us with a variety of viewpoints put together a
late-breaking presentation?  (I think the Town Hall deadline has
passed.)

Hypertext is what got me into XML, and I'd be happy to attend a
conference that was just about various approaches to hypertext and XML.
Hopefully other people could at least find a session interesting.
Extreme Markup Languages has a lot of that flavor, but I'm afraid that
just happened a couple of weeks ago, so it's a little late to add to the
program.

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