xml-dev - Re: <?XDEV?> and BEHAVIOR: a meta-proposal and a proposal

[Peter Murray-Rust <peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>]

At 14:09 16/11/97 +1100, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
>
> 
>> From: Peter Murray-Rust <peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>
> 
>> <PROPOSAL>
>> That two attribute values for XML-LINK's BEHAVIOR attribute be recognised
>> through an XDEV PI:
>> 	BEHAVIOR="DisplayStandAlone"
>> 	BEHAVIOR="DisplayInContext"
>> That for the second option an additional attribute CONTEXTREF is required,
>> whose value is a valid URL and points to the XML element providing the
>> display context of the current element.
>> 	The actual details of display are application (and possibly stylesheet)
>> dependent.
>> </PROPOSAl>
>
>Another approach might be to use the name prefix XDEV: on attribute 
>values, e.g.
>
>	BEHAVIOUR="XDEV:DisplayStandAlone"

I hadn't thought of these possibilities, thanks Rick.

This one is fine and legal, but requires the processor (all friendly
processors) to look for namespaces in attribute values. Since attributes
can have colons for many other reasons I suspect this approach will cause
problems. For example:

WAKE-UP-TIME="12:00"

>
>and the contextref attribute you suggest, e.g.
>
>	BEHAVIOUR="XDEV:DisplayInContext"
>	XDEV:CONTEXTREF="saltmines.xml#DESCENDANT(1,ORGCHART)"

This relies on the namespace proposal being adopted for attribute names. I
don't know where that has got to, and its probably confidential to XML-SIG.
I can see its attraction in cases like this. 

The namespace allows the pre-colon prefix to be mapped to a schema file,
which could - in turn - contain a reference to the XML-DEV posting(s).

Something like XML:BEHAVIOR would *not* be a good idea because it would be
a different attribute from BEHAVIOR. So if only the BEHAVIOR attribute were
altered (BEHAVIOR="XDEV:BLINK") there would be no formal method of picking
it up.

I cannot remember whether PIs can be linked to schema files, i.e. something
like:

<?xml:namespace
HREF="http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/9711/6789.html" 
AS="XDEV">

<?XDEV XML-LINK-:BEHAVIOR="ContextDisplay">

	P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg

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