xml-dev - RE: XLink transformations

[Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@ebt.com>]

> So when the document is transformed, the view is regenerated. In other
> words,
> the incoming XML document might have a path
>   /x/y/z
> and the document is transformed so the the top-level element is renamed
> "a".
> The path should be regenerated /a/y/z
> 
> The thing that should survive a transformation is not the text
> specifying a XPointer or XPath but the pointer or path itself.   If
> anyone cares to work out the details of what is needed for this, they
> would be doing everyone a great service.

I worked on this some time ago in a different context. At then end of
the day, you cannot guarantee that the XPointer will be valid after
transformation, simply because in some cases, the content may have
been deleted entirely.

Fundamentally, the question is whether one links to the source or derived
object. Ideally, one would link to the source so as to allow the Xlinks to
be stable across various presentations (ie. applications of different
style sheets). In most normal situations, this is trivial to do, but
again, cannot be guaranteed to be reliable (ie. so the links are fragile
in the face of deletions).

Linking to the derived object, on the other hand, is reliable so long
as the transformation applied to the source doesn't change.

Of course, linking in general is fragile if major source changes are made.