• From: "Len Bullard" <cbullard@h...>
• To: "'Ben Trafford'" <ben@p...>, <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:58:03 -0500

No it was tough sledding after the first couple of years of work.  The book
by Steve deRose and Dave Durand is a real help on that.

Also consider links as just another datatype being consumed or produced.  As
I said earlier, one problem of the stylesheet approach is to conflate the
link-object-as-event-receiving-control with the data it consumes and
produces.   The n-way link as a Select control is just one example (I've
seen that applied to popups and yes, the Javascript analog is nasty and
nastier now that the Eolas patent is there.  It screws over VML and just
about any other links that activate and stay).  One good part of Hytime was
the locator types then it became more and more abstract to the point that
anyone trying to author a link needed to be a compiler author.  That was
when the tradeoff of abstraction vs productivity began to derail the
standard.

I was just about to buy the Buffy series when I left my last employer.
Until I am reemployed, I'll have to keep getting up at 5AM to catch them on
FX.

OTOH, I have all of Firefly. :-)

len


From: Ben Trafford [mailto:ben@p...] 
 
At 02:44 PM 9/28/2006, Len Bullard wrote:
>As I said elsewhere, look at ISO 10744 which is about as exhaustive a work
>as I've encountered, but it isn't easy sledding, so look at what Elliot
>wrote about it.

         Read it. All of it. For the third time. I like HyTime, a 
lot. It informed XLink development on a number of levels, and by 
proxy, will inform my current efforts.

>BTW:  in personal recollection, the numbers that came down on the side of
>attaching semantics via style sheets in hypertext systems was approximately
>three to one.  One might ask why and the only answer I was given was it was
>convenient and that might have something to do with the order of
processing.

         I don't think semantics can adequately be attached in 
stylesheets. I think rendering can, but that's a wholly different animal.

         I think that, just as we're looking at two camps, we're also 
looking at two different ideas: 1) Making CSS do good things with 
links, in the XLink conceptual model. 2) Making a way for all the 
various linking specs to get along and share a common foundation, 
from which linking applications (as in, programs -and- XML 
applications) can be built.

         As an aside...

>When I finally watch the series finale, I'll know.  I guess I could look it
>up in Wikipedia (well, I know Spike rejoins them but...) but that ruins the
>entertainment value.

         The DVDs for it are worth buying, if only for the outtakes. 
Those people were having a lot of fun. :^)

--->Ben 


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• References:
  • RE: XML-DEV list
    • From: Ben Trafford <ben@p...>