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henrik.martensson@bostream.nu (Henrik Martensson) writes:
>You are basing your argument on the assumption that XLink works poorly,
>but it does not. XLink works well for a large class of links.
Actually, no. XLink works well for a particular set of projects,
provided that the choices they made - on both the model and the syntax -
correspond well with what you want to do.
I find that for a large class of links it works very badly. In
particular, it seems utterly incapable of working with HTML's structures
- something that was once a goal but disappeared. In terms of practical
application, that largely kills it.
>XLink does not have to work for everything. It just has to work for
>enough types of links to make it advantageous to share code. It does
>that.
Perhaps, for the subset of cases where the above criteria apply.
>I have worked on implementing XLink systems at Ericsson, NDC, Volvo,
>Scania and other companies. The linking systems work very well. I have
>also been able to reuse enough code to make it worthwhile to develop
>it.
That's basically like telling me "but W3C XML Schema works for my cases,
so how dare you complain about its failings?"
>The biggest problems I run into are not with XLink per se, it is with a
>poor understanding of the concepts of linking. That must be dealt with
>no matter what linking system you want to implement.
Thanks, but I think I understand linking pretty well after 15 years in a
wide variety of different situations. The problems are not merely with
the users.
>XLink certainly isn't perfect, but from a technical point of view it
>accomplishes pretty much what it sets out to do. One could certainly
>argue that it could be done better, but as far as I know, to date it
>hasn't.
As long as you take a narrow view of requirements, it's easy to achieve
them. XLink sort of vaguely mostly does this except for losing HTML
along the way, but that doesn't account for the costs it imposes either.
>> I'd rather see gatekeepers doing this work than trusting it to kings
>> and councils.
>
>I find this appealing, but the gatekeepers are at it now, and they are
>making a mess of it.
Which gatekeepers are you talking about?
>If initiative is defined as writing the same boring implementations for
>cross-references and subdocuments over and over again, then you are
>right.
I'd prefer to define initiative as crafting solutions that fit
particular problems well. If you'd prefer to automate things and
thereby avoid thinking about them, I think you have some deep problems
that may well please your employers but produce enormous brittleness in
the longer term.
>In every SGML/XML project I've been in the past five years, the same
>linking problems have always cropped up. Every time I have to sit
>through the same discussions, and use the same arguments and
>counterarguments. XLink makes it possible to write a piece of software
>that solves the problems, point to it and say "we'll use that!". Then
>you can move on to more interesting things.
>
>I agree that XLink does not solve every linking problem. However, I
>think that the main problem isn't that XLink is bad, but that the
>concept of linking itself is poorly understood.
>
>Given the complexity of the problem, and the low level of understanding
>generally, XLink does a remarkably good job.
As noted above, I disagree with this assessment on every point.
Fortunately, it doesn't matter much, as XLink seems unlikely ever to
escape from the niches where it has found a home.
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