Re: XHTML 2.0 and the death of XLink and XPointer?

[Masayasu Ishikawa <mimasa@w3.org>]

AndrewWatt2000@aol.com wrote:

> Is this an issue for the TAG?

This is an issue for the TAG.

    http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/ilist#xlinkScope-23

> Additionally the XHTML 2.0 WD has no indication that I could find of support 
> for XPointer. One wonders why the primitive # fragment identifier is the only 
> (as far as I could see) fragment identifier in W3C's "new generation" XHTML? 

RFC 2396, "4.1. Fragment Identifier" says as follows:

   The semantics of a fragment identifier is a property of the data
   resulting from a retrieval action, regardless of the type of URI used
   in the reference.  Therefore, the format and interpretation of
   fragment identifiers is dependent on the media type [RFC2046] of the
   retrieval result.  ...

It is defined to be dependent on the media type.  If RFC 3023 gets
updated and adopted XPointer, then if you serve an XHTML 2 document
as 'application/xml', whatever fragment identifier syntax allowed for
'application/xml' may be used for that document - though, currently
there's no defined fragment identifier syntax in RFC 3023.

We thought that's a disaster, so "[u]ntil [XMLMIME] gets updated",
the 'application/xhtml+xml' media type uses 'id' attribute value.
Once RFC 3023 gets updated, RFC 3236 will also be updated to adopt
whatever 'application/xml' adopted.

> Is the absence of mention of XPointer in the XHTML 2.0 WD an indication that 
> the XHTML WG intends to forego in perpetuity the potential benefits of 
> XPointer?

No.  We are waiting XPointer to advance to more mature stage, and
relevant media type registrations get updated.

Regards,
-- 
Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium