[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: TAG on HLink
At 11:49 AM 9/27/2002 +0100, Norman Gray wrote: >Would XLink 1.1 be reasonable? HLink and XLink, though they share the >underlying ideas, are syntactically very different. It doesn't seem >sensible to ram both of them into the same specification. I can see your point. However, the concepts work together. XLink was intended to have an attribute remapping aspect, we just couldn't figure out how to do it. Remember, these were back in the days of "pure XML" when it was viewed as the panacea for all problems. From my perspective, the XLink WG would have gotten slapped down had they suggested an approach like Steven Pemberton's. The political climate in the XML world is a little different these days. I think the concepts of HLink could be subsumed into XLink. >Would it not be better, therefore, to drop the current XLink completely >and simply call HLink `XLink 2.0', since it doesn't really seem to >have too much to do with XHTML. No, I doubt it would work. A lot of us XLink fans would probably be a little upset. It also doesn't make any sense, since HLink's semantics are based on XLink, not separate from it. Do you see any definition of 'actuate' in the HLink spec? Me, neither. >and know what it's expected to do with it. However, your description >of it as merely `really quite nice' suggests that there's a use-case >here for which XLink's practice of scattering special attributes is >an adequate solution. What am I missing? You're missing people like me, who like linkbases, and links that are embedded right in the document. Attribute remapping has always struck me as messy. Necessary, but messy. For example, let's say I want to style those links (i.e. add behaviour): instead of a processor going through the document, finding the link, recognizing it, and styling it, we now have to process through an attribute remapping definition, then through the document. Sounds awfully similar to validating a DTD to me; what if I just want well-formedness, and to parse the links directly through a link processor and a style processor? People seem to have the opinion that XLink was never meant to include attribute remapping, or that the group just ignored it. Neither is the case. Attribute remapping was one of the original goals; and we did a lot of work on it. We just couldn't figure out a way to do it that would go over cleanly. --->Ben
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