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Linking solutions

• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>, "xml-dev@l..." <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Linking solutions
• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 07:37:43 -0700
• References: <r01050300-1015-F6F83E1CB2B311D6B7AA0003937A08C2@[192.168.124.21]>

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Yes, it's yet-another-packaging-problem, and no one wants to go near
> packaging.  For now, RDDL seems like a good place to put this
> information, as does a MIME Content-type registration.

I have two proposals:

Proposal #1:

A new vocabulary which we call the XML Linking Schema language. It has
two purposes. The first is that it describes how to recognize links in
an XML document, probably using one of the two W3C pattern languages
(XPath patterns, CSS selectors, ...). The second is that it describes
the range of each link types. i.e. that personRef must link to a person
element and so forth. XML Schema has some weak support for this (through
keys) but it is really not sufficiently powerful to be widely usable.

The procedure for finding a linking schema would be just like those for
finding a schema. You COULD follow a magic attribute
("xml:linking-schema"). You COULD follow a link to a RDDL and find the
linking schema from there. You COULD "just know" what linking schema is
associated with the top-level namespace.

Proposal #2:

We could have a more generalized syntax for doing out-of-line
element/attribute renaming or annotating could be standardized. Once
again it would have patterns but it would be substantially simpler than
XSLT in that it would only rename or annotate things but never (e.g.)
reorder them. I imagine it saying something along the lines of:

<annotate match="xhtml:img">
   <attribute name="xlink:href" select="@src"/>
</annotate>

The "finding" procedure would be similar to the one before, but not link
specific:

<mydoc>
<xm:type-mapping from="somenamespace" to="somenamespace"
href="somefile.xmap">

The processor could either use that OR use RDDL OR use some cached or a
priori knowledge of the mappings allowed for a vocabulary.
====
The first proposal kills two birds (link recognition and validation)
with one stone. The second proposal kills N birds with one stone.

-- 
"When I walk on the floor for the final execution, I'll wear a denim 
suit. I'll walk in there like Willie Nelson, John Wayne, Will Smith 
-- Men in Black -- James Brown. Maybe do a Michael Jackson moonwalk."
Congressman James Traficant.

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