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Back in the days (ca. 1997) when XML was bright and shiny it had three components: - XML Core (I think this was the term) - XML Style (now XSL-*) - XML Link I was optimistic and naive enough to believe that XLink was going to happen in the same way as the first two (which IMO are great successes). I assumed that it would acquire toolkits like the first two. I personally hacked quite a lot of code to support XLink at a prototype level. There are even examples in CML. I have been very disappointed that it hasn't really happened. I need XLink for semantic relationships. I assumed that these were implied in it as well as "rendering". From the recent discussion it seems semantics is in a minority. When everyone talks about the S/semantic W/web we are still obsessed with sighted humans. As a result I have had to implement my own linking structure in CML. (Yes, I also use RDF, but it isn't cuddly). I need a strongly typed bidirectional link (i.e. the link knows what the type of the element is at the end). I want to point from an <atom> to a <molecule> and know that the link will check the target is of the correct type. So I waited for an XLink toolkit. (It didn't have to be bloated like so many of the modern XML specs and tools.) None appeared. So I have had to do it all myself - the spec, the examples, the semantics, the code. What a waste of my time to end up with a system incompatible with anything else. P. Peter Murray-Rust Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069
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