XLINK is primarily about defining
links between documents in a standard manner and not about defining
relations
Can you explain the difference between a link and a
relation[ship]?
Honestly I do not understand your
complain here: XLINK is a specification, so, like any standard it needs some
fixed attribute or element name. The same goes for all the specifications. Lets
take the XML Schema specification: you have some standard tags like
"complexType, simpleType, complexContent" a.s.o. You could complain that XML
Schema is useless because it forces you to use a certain set of
tags.
If XLink is in the user interface space then it's
reasonable for it to have its own vocabulary. But then it needs to be part of
the user interface family of specs like XHTML. Why should it be in a
specification all on its own?
If XLink isn't in the user interface space then I
don't know what it's doing: I don't want standard attributes for defining
relationships, I want to define my own.
I think XLink has never really decided whether it's in
the "information content" space or the "user interface" space, and that's why
no-one is using it.
Michael Kay
