[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Re: determining ID-ness in XML
Reaaonably, yes. Realistically, I can't say. Language designers for the WWW are free to do as they will and that is precisely the problems the Hytimers were tackling. Why? In their world, they didn't see a system unified by syntax, but by agreements on abstract forms each notation processor had to support. That was a tough love approach, but it had some promise. Again, what does an XPointer do with a PDF document? Nothing, probably. Could it? Possibly yes. It requires agreements that are somewhat abstract and that is why guys like Dan Connolly said, "I just can't grok HyTime." It wasn't simply obscure; it was saying something that it takes time and experience to understand; some forms of control really are doctrinal; they tell you what you have to do (the intent, the results), but not how. This is a lot like trying to teach the infoSet to a room full of COM programmers who keep looking up and saying, "show me the code! show me the code!" They are usually a year or so into their development before they realize they don't know how the system works. IDness is the root fundamental of reliable addressing. Tim and James are right to point out this is a gap, but it is a gap the XML WG and SIG put there. So now we have to ask ourselves how much of this we want to solve. My feeling is that given the current proposals, we will be extending the system vocabulary every few months. I am also concerned that regardless of the feeling that XMLIsTheThing, the other hypertext notation targets will have the same issues leading inevitably to the reinvention of Hytime under another name and that we may have to come back and do this again with even higher costs. This is how 80/20 bites us. We can punt it away and solve only part of the problem now, and that is what we are likely to do given the politics and personal persuasions. The Web Architecture group should stop and ask itself if traditionalism works against effective design. len -----Original Message----- From: Leigh Dodds [mailto:ldodds@i...] Something else to consider: CSS provides a Selector based on ID [1]. The text at [1] acknowledges that ID linking is unreliable (DTD might not be processed or might not exist), and presents a work around: using attribute selectors. Looks to me that any solution to the 'ID problem' will have to work with CSS, and presumably impact the CSS specification as well, yes?
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