RE: [xml-dev] Xlink Isn't Dead

["Bob DuCharme" <bob@snee.com>]

(My addendum: sorry, I sent off that last one before it was done.)

On Fri, September 22, 2006 10:17 pm, Ben Trafford wrote:

>          I'd rather not use a transformation when I should just be
> able use something like:

Either way, the point is that we store the semantics of the content and
the link relationship(s) in a device-independent format, and then we use
the stylesheet language of our choice to convert it into something
appropriate to the medium where we want to output it. I chose XSLT 1.0 to
do that (and only 3 of my 10 lines were really necessary to address your
example; I just wanted to make it a complete stylesheet so that I could
test it) and you chose CSS. If syntax like

>          xlink-href: ||location; /* where the || indicates an
> attribute inspection

is more intuitive to you, and works for you, then you'll get your
implementation done in a language you're happy with, and that's what
counts. If I prefer XSLT, and others prefer DOM or SAX or the latest
Java-oriented XML API, and it works for them, fine. If we can all convert
the same XML into our chosen output medium with our favorite stylesheet
language or API, then that XML was well-designed, and I (and, I believe,
Michael Kay) believe that this should apply to linking relationships as
well as the roles of block and inline elements of content.

>The other problem with this approach is that it still can
>only result in unidirectional, single-ended HTML-style links.

Your original example had no indication that it was supposed to be
anything but a unidirectional, single-ended link. Some feel that all such
link descriptions should by default be considered one end of a
bidirectional link, but if we are to treat this link as one of those, this
has to be indicated either in the markup or in some documentation about
the default behavior of the system being described.

Bob