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   Re: [xml-dev] Re: Can XLink be fixed?

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I keep thinking about these divisions between what XLink does (define
the existence of a relationship between resources) and what it doesn't
do (provide much guidance on if/when/how to use it).

I'm just not sure that there's much real benefit to using XLink.  On the
one hand, sure it provides a generic means of indicating connections.
On the other, applications that do things like slap an xml:lang on the
link element to indicate which language it's in are providing guidance
about the nature of the link that goes beyond the role/arcrole info that
XLink provides, and which could perhaps even contradict the best guess
of a 'pure' XLink system.

XLink is generic enough that people want to impose it on projects, but
also generic enough that there doesn't seem be any tremendous benefit
from using it.  I guess I'm having a hard time seeing why XLink is very
exciting at this point, except perhaps to people who want to do linking
out of line, in which case it doesn't matter at all whether the target
document used XLink or not.

Elliotte Rusty Harold writes:
> SSL:
> >I'm not sure I feel confident, however, that it's the one and only
> >correct answer.  There's a layer in there which feels like it's
> >somewhere between simple and complex links, and I don't think XLink
> >has really described how the relationship between the img element
> >and the child element simple links in src and longdesc might work.
> 
> It absolutely does not, because this is application layer markup. The 
> XLink syntax only defines the existence of a link between two 
> resources, the meaning and behavior of that link is a question for 
> the particular application and the local processing environment, and 
> this is how it's intended to be.
> 
> XLink cannot and should not attempt to define this. XHTML most 
> certainly should define the meaning of links within its domain. And 
> other applications will define the meaning and behavior of links 
> within theirs.


-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.com may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether




 

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