[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: [Fwd: The problems with Xlink for integration langu ages]
> There is another important structural problem with HLink. It is adopting > the same conceptual disaster as <OBJECT> - overgeneralization in a single > element type, a false economy. It leads to omnium gatherum attribute sets > with all sorts of interdependencies. (You'd think people would have > learned from the INPUT element in HTML!) It's all very fine to say that > if the effect attribute is embed and the actuate attribute is onLoad then > the onSuccess attribute means such-and-such, but without an *exhaustive* > analysis of the various combinations, the spec is deficient in untangling > a problem of its own making. This will result in either a reluctance to > implement because the bogotic combinations lack definition, or an interop > problem when the bogotic combinations are read as an invitation to um, > "embrace and extend". I agree with the point about object. I saw a lot of praise for the idea of collapsing applet and img into object, but I find the idea a bewildering step backwards. I hear talk that this will reduce the number of tags Web authors need to remember. But I agree with you that remembering all the resulting constellation of nuances of object will be a much harder task than remembering 2 different GIs. And wait until browser nuances are added to that mix. As I design vocabularies, a significant difference of semantics in most processing of two elements requires a different type names for these elements. By this measure, img and applet undoubtedly deserve separate element types. The reductio ad absurdum of the collapse into object is: <tag role="paragraph">... <tag role="header">... Probably a bit too saucy an argument, but I certainly can't see the rational argument for the new super-OBJECT tag. However, I'm trying to follow your extension of this criticism to HLink. It is the hlink element itself that you find an over-stuffed concept, right? Not the elements it describes. -- Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc. http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com Apache 2.0 API - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-apache/ Basic XML and RDF techniques for knowledge management, Part 7 - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think12.html Keeping pace with James Clark - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/libra ry/x-jclark.html
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