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Re: XLink and mixed vocabulary design

• To: XML Developer List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: XLink and mixed vocabulary design
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:04:10 -0500
• In-reply-to: <400FF9C8.30104@e...>

robin.berjon@e... (Robin Berjon) writes:
>> robin.berjon@e... (Robin Berjon) writes:
>>>The ability to understand links without knowledge of the 
>>>vocabulary seems to me to be of high value. 
>> 
>> If it was, people might do it. 
>
>It's way too early to tell, compound documents are still rare. Besides, 
>people haven't exactly been given a chance.

There is an element of chicken-and-egg to it.  Still, even when I was
presenting on XLink regularly, I never had anyone ask about this.  I'm
aware of very few XLink link-harvesters, though I think STEP UK had one
long ago.

>>>The ability to stuff embedding and hyperlinking on the same element
>>>appears to me to be of fairly little value.
>> 
>> To you, perhaps.  To me, it seems like basic functionality.
>
>Would you mind to expose in which ways stuffing those two
>functionalities onto the a single element is basic? To me inclusion is
>basic, but as I said the ability to include no more than one document
>at any given point is a silly limitation (and enough to render the
>feature useless to me).

I suspect we can argue about "basic", but to me this:

<img src="thumbnail.jpg" href="fullpicture.jpg" />

makes far more sense than:
<a href="fullpicture.jpg"><img src="thumbnail.jpg" /></a>

I don't see the need for two elements to represent that functionality.
It seems to clutter language design and complicate document structures
to no particular purpose.  (And yes, I use that pattern constantly.  See
http://simonstl.com/dryden/archives/000095.html for an example using my
house.)

>> I think there are multiple communities of hypertext practice out
there,
>> and XLink, so far as I can tell, has proven optimal (heck, even
>> exciting) for none.
>
>That's another debate altogether -- XLink may not be sexy, but at least 
>it's there. To misquote: "generic linking is like sex, even when it's 
>bad it's still pretty good".

Generic linking is pretty much just bad at this point, IMHO.  I think it
may be time to obliterate the notion that hypertext should be
implemented as generic functionality across a wide range of projects.  

Bad sex is not pretty good, IMHO.

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: Robin Berjon <robin.berjon@e...>
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• References:
  • Re: XLink and mixed vocabulary design
    • From: Robin Berjon <robin.berjon@e...>

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