Re: [xml-dev] XML Fragments

[Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au>]

Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

> I've read the W3C XML Fragment Interchange Candidate 
> Recommendation[2], which I've never seen implemented (that may just be 
> because I'm ignorant.) The specification seems verbose, and is 
> therefore in my opinion unfit as a generic way of transferring XML 
> fragments.

I think it has only been implemented twice (once by me, once by a 
student I was helping).

FragInt is fine technically, but it doesn't really fit in with XML as it 
is practised: if you want a selection of data you use a database query 
that generates XML; if you want a fragment of a book then you typically 
want a chapter sized chunk (file size);  if you want to encapsulate some 
fragment you use simple SOAP;  people don't do distributed updates (or 
they use backend tools for replication); there is no widespread way to 
say which information in the context has inheritable scope, so there is 
no automatic way to make fragments of that kind of documents; etc.

I would love FragInt to become a standard part of the basic XML stack. 
Its absense is an XLink killer, for example. But probably it is one of 
those things so fundamental that there is no demand, perhaps in a 
similar fashion to how the tribesmen in my brother's old village never 
wanted soft underpants instead of itchy arsegrass: never had it, never 
missed it.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe