Re: [xml-dev] The Link King

["Peter Hunsberger" <peter.hunsberger@gmail.com>]

On 10/2/06, peter murray-rust <pm286@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> At 04:56 03/10/2006, Dave Pawson wrote:

<snip/>

> >
> >Peter, as well as link types, what information do you need to know
> >about a link
> >to present it in a suitable manner?
>
> I am not generally concerned with presentation. In general CML is
> processed without emitting photons to humans. I use XML as a language
> to represent types and structure of information. It *may* be rendered
> but often it is not.
>
> This is not a comprehensive list but I have things like:
>
> <molecule id="m1>... atoms ... </molecule>
> ...
> <molecule ref="m1">
> effectively the same as a Java reference. I need molecule m1 at this
> stage but I don't want to copy it:
>
> <map role="spectrumAnnotation">
>    <link fromType="atom" from="a1" toType="peak" to="p1"/>
> </map>
> says that atom a1 corresponds to peak p1. Or p1 is annotated by
> saying it is "caused by", "explained by" etc a1
>
> and then I want a linkbase that defines a bounded hyperdocument. I
> pick up the index document and get everything else

Once more, I'd strongly argue for the formal separation of
relationship management and link rendering.  Here the semantics here
seem clear enough; the very fact that you want strong typing indicates
that it is the relationship between the two types that is of primary
importance and not the link traversal.

As such (for the more general question at hand), if you are compiling
a list of linking use cases I think you first need to compile a list
of relationship types and then enumerate those for which link
presentation is applicable and what types of presentation makes sense
for each relationship type.  Some example relationships types would
include:, primary key/foreign key relationships (including id/idref?),
object inheritance, hyper links and hierarchical inclusion (ie. XML
parent/child element relationships).

>
> >I.e. is there a required/optional set of link properties that would assist in
> >your particular usage (presentation I believe is your issue)?
>
> No - presentation can be done with normal stylesheets. Semantic
> annotation is what I care about. What does it mean, not what does it
> look like to a human.

I assume you are in touch with the conceptual graph and related areas
of  research?

<snip/>

-- 
Peter Hunsberger