RE: [xml-dev] Current status of XLink

["Andrew Welch" <AWelch@piper-group.com>]

Thanks for all the info.

My current solution appears to be loosely related to topic maps (in that
the links are defined externally to the things they link together), and
a superset of xlink *apart* from the range features of xpointer. 

As there doesn't appear to be a 'standard' form of (extensible)
independent linking at the moment, I think its safe to continue down the
proprietary route for now.

cheers
andrew  


> >What is the current status of Xlink?
> 
> I wrote something at 
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/03/13/xlink.html two years ago 
> about how little it had been used since becoming a 
> Recommendation, and it hasn't been used much since, with one 
> significant exception that Tony Coates pointed out when the 
> article came out: XLink does play a significant role in XBRL, 
> and XBRL is doing quite well.
> 
> My theory about XLink's lack of success is the lack of 
> evangelism. No one likes it enough to write up 
> implementations and push it at the conferences. RDF and Topic 
> Maps, which address many of the same issues that XLink was 
> positioned as addressing, drew off many of XLink's proponents 
> and no one seems to be left to push it as a solution to 
> existing problems or as a way to implement new classes of 
> applications. 
> 
> There are technical issues as well about XLink's strengths 
> and weaknesses, but you can find plenty of discussions of 
> those by searching xml-dev archives.
> 
> I have been curious about Mozilla's evolving support, though. 
> 
> Bob