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At 10:23 AM -0400 8/16/02, Bob DuCharme wrote:
>The XLink Rec claims to only define the existence of a link between
>resources (two resources? Elliotte, you of all people!) , but then
>it defines, or at least makes some very clear suggestions, for quite
>a bit of link behavior with the xlink:show and xlink:actuate
>attributes.
Yes, but it's also clear that:
1. An application does not need to use or support xlink:actuate or
xlink:show if they don't make sense for that application domain,
either by implicitly ignoring it or setting the value to other or
none.
2. Even when xlink:actuate and xlink:show are set to specific values
individual programs can ignore those suggestions. For instance, a web
spider might well ignore any link with xlink:show="embed" and
automatically actuate all other links.
> I think that addressing link behavior to the extent that it does is
>one of the biggest problems with XLink, and the fact that what
>little scattershot implementation of XLink that is out there either
>implements the behavior part *or* the typing, arcrole, etc. parts
>shows that these fall into different architectural levels that
>really should be treated separately.
>
I think xlink:show and xlink:actuate were mostly intended to
reproduce the existing semantics of different kinds of HTML links.
For the most part, I think simple XLinks map to HTML fairly well. I'm
a little surprised the HTML folks object to these so strongly. The
major argument I see against XLink is the question of backwards
compatibility and familiarity, but XHTML 2.0 has already tossed these
worthy goals in the trash bin, so I don't think they can object to
XLink on these grounds.
--
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| XML in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002) |
| http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/ |
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/ |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ |
| Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ |
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