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My two cents on SkunkLink and the potential future directions of linking in
XML, which recapitulates something I said in the Linking Town Hall in
Baltimore:
An important recurring theme in this thread has been the need for
modularization in linking markup, and I hope that this idea doesn't fade away.
At its core, a link only needs a single piece of information: the locator
for a remote resource. If that's all there is, the resource holding it is
the implied other end of the relationship being expressed, and you have a link:
<para>Check <link>http://www.cnn.com/WEATHER</link> before you fly to Los
Angeles.</para>
I'll admit, before Len points it out, that for better or worse this
particular URI itself carries some additional semantic information; you
don't have to follow it to get an idea of where it goes. Still, of all the
people saying "I've stripped down linking to its essentials," I'm shooting
for the "most stripped-down" prize.
Now, most will agree, if not insist, that a linking architecture needs more
than just locators. It needs a few more things. What things? I have my own
opinion, which I will keep to myself for now. Micah has published his idea
of what they are (three of xlink:show's five values: replace, embed, and
none. Just kidding.) Simon has alluded to a work in progress. What I'd
really like to see is that once everyone submits their ideas about the most
important metadata to carry with a link, we group this metadata into
functional categories and then raise the discourse to a level that
addresses those categories, particularly their dependency relationships.
That would be the beginnings of a real linking architecture, and something
that could be implemented as a modular spec that could more easily serve a
lot of needs without overwhelming anyone. (Wouldn't it have been great if
W3C Schema had done that?)
Bob DuCharme www.snee.com/bob <bob@
snee.com> "The elements be kind to thee, and make thy
spirits all of comfort!" Anthony and Cleopatra, III ii
(NOTE: bobdc e-mail address used only for mailing lists)
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