RE: [xml-dev] XPointer is dead. What about XLink?

["Louis Matherne" <matherne@optonline.net>]

I've subscribed to this list for a number of years and I've only been a
"lurker" with the hope that I might learn a thing or two.  Most of what is
discussed here is either out of scope of what I do or over my head so I've
never commented in the past.

But XBRL is what I do for a living as well as my mission in life, so I have
a lot of interest in this group's perspective relative to Xlink and how it
has been implemented in XBRL.  

I've learned and used XBRL as a subject matter expert (financial reporting)
and along the way have gained a better appreciation for its technical
underpinnings but in no way would I consider myself an xml expert.

So with that out of way, I'd be very interested in hearing your perspective
or learning what you would have done different with XBRL relative to its
structure and specifically Xlink, which is fundamental to its architecture.

For some examples, you can view the base us-gaap taxonomy from here -
http://yeti1.corefiling.com/yeti/resources/yeti-gwt/Yeti.jsp#tax~(id~52*v~76
)!net~(a~779*l~239)!lang~(code~en-us)!rg~(rg~7*p~3)
And recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission here -
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/usgaap.rss.xml 

Louis Matherne

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 10:47 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] XPointer is dead. What about XLink?

Michael Kay wrote:
> But if we want enhanced behaviour for links, the first thing is to put it
at
> the right point in the architecture. That's the user-interface vocabulary,
> not the data representation - and that's what XLink got wrong.

Now that's a good subject for a Balisage talk, or maybe a set of talks.

I think that most of what XLink got wrong was political - there wasn't 
much effort at outreach to people who use links, and I think a lot of 
people assumed the benefits were obvious.

The architecture level question created a lot of issues, though, as 
behavior (user interface) is critical to explaining why these things are 
necessary, but the initial XLink approach seemed intent on defining only 
a data model.  (I'd say a partial data model at that.)

I wish I could I say there were clear lessons from the experience that 
might improve the odds of improving hypertext next time around, but 
well... I can't.  I suspect better hypertext will have to impress people 
in a walled garden before crossing over into the general web.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/

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