Re: [xml-dev] (In)Validate My Assumptions on Linking.

["andrew welch" <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>]

On 9/28/06, Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@gmail.com> wrote:
> In your example, the relationship is hard coded in the CSS as
>
>     link-target: attr(moreinfo);
>
> that's a pretty limited capability and doesn't easily allow for two
> way linking, dynamic linking or many other things that people want to
> do.

I think that would be a really useful addition to CSS, maybe it's a
separate issue.

> Instead someone may want something more like:
>
>    <hotel name="Dream"/>
>
> and in a separate document
>
>    <link select="/hotel[@name = 'Dream']"
> href="http://example.org/dream-hotel"/>
>
> and in the CSS:
>
>     link { link-type: simple  }
>
> Don't get hung up on my syntax here.  The point is, the concepts of
> presentation and relationship building need to be separated.

I implemented an "independent linking" solution for my last employer.
The link file identified the end points using xpaths, which left the
original documents untouched.  The link file would be processed first,
creating a stylesheet with templates to handle the elements that
should be links.  This stylesheet would import the standard stylesheet
and defer handling to those templates to ensure whatever element the
link was attached to it would be output in the normal way.  It all
worked well, but it did rely heavily on javascript to create the popup
menus to display the multi-arc links.

The syntax was something like (it was a few years ago now):

<docid="doc1">
  <endpoint id="ep1" element="/xpath/to/element"/>
  <endpoint id="ep2" element="/xpath/to/element"/>
</doc>

<doc id="doc2">
  <endpoint id="ep3" element="/xpath/to/element"/>
</doc>

<links>
  <link id="l1">
    <arc from="ep1" to="ep2"/>
    <arc from="ep1" to="ep3"/>
    <arc from="ep2" to="ep1"/>
    <arc from="ep2" to="ep3"/>
    <arc from="ep3" to="ep1"/>
    <arc from="ep3" to="ep2"/>
  </link>
</links>

When an element was processed that was in the link file a graphic
would be output, which when clicked presented the user with relevant
choice of links.  Users could create these independent links either
from the right-click menu in the browser, or by editing the link file
using a standalone app.

I tend to think there are two disinct camps here - those that would
like simple links in CSS, and those that would like full blown
multi-arc independent linking in publishing.

cheers
andrew