RE: XML "needs" a credible linking specification? Discuss.

>Does XML actually "need" a credible linking specification?

            I’m uncomfortable with the word credible in this context. I suppose that html’s simple hyperlinking is non-credible, when does the status of credibility accrue to a spec. When it’s simply too incredible for common use? [very very sorry for the pun]

> Did I misunderstand what XML was supposed to be about? Or has the vision or reality changed irrevocably?

            I have the suspicion that it has changed, but I am not capable or indeed credible enough to define that change in language, I define it in my gut. I suppose that TAG is supposed to in some measure define that vision or reality, and generic SGML does not seem to be part of it from the on and off reading I’ve been doing. I think the vision now seems to be XML as some component of achieving on one hand the Semantic Web and on the other the Programmable Web(web services) and that SGML to most people working on these things does not come into the discussion.

>If, as seems currently to be the case, the serving of "generic SGML" on the Web seems to have been largely ignored by the ordinary >user do we really need a linking specification for XML?

            Perhaps if it were a linking specification that went towards uniting the bifurcated visions outlined above. I don’t know if XLink does this, I sometimes feel that XLink doesn’t do anything I want. I think there may be a lot of people out there in the “Real World” who feel the same.

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