RE: [xml-dev] xml:href, xml:rel and xml:type

["Len Bullard" <Len.Bullard@ses-i.com>]

No problem.  I'm in the unique slot, as Ken Holmann said, to eat my own
dog food.   I probably am the one who inserted those references to
Hytime some decades ago before I left for another life; so evolution has
bypassed this backwater of markup.   It is definitely ripe for upgrades
and it is a major user and distributor of XML Off The Web.

IMO, it shouldn't matter any longer if the XML user is off or on the
web.  Enough.  Battle over.  Web wins.  Tech is just tech and if we can
get a productivity/quality burst in these high cost/low pay days, let's
consider it.  Why NOT have an XML hypertext engine with full
capabilities?  There is NO reason why it has to be a gencoded system.   

<emphasis>HTML5 is lazy thinking.</emphasis>

Imagine a 1400 page manual that has a few thousand xrefs being managed
by hand as the different manual parts are being assembled for final
rendering.  ID/IDREF checking is helpful but not nearly enough.  An
author and a user of the manual MUST be able to dereference those items.
This is quite literally a matter of life and death.   Consider a
procedure referencing, for example, an expendable item such as a sealant
compound with an xref pointing to the item listing of that compound in a
table of expendable items and there are five different types of sealants
ALL called sealant compound.   It is your job to put the references in
as an XML tagger and there are no SMEs to tell you which one is used in
which procedure.

Now imagine you are flying in a rotary aircraft at 175 knots that has
just come out of the shop for repairs that required sealant compounds.

Usually the mechs are smart enough to know but...

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Rushforth, Peter [mailto:Peter.Rushforth@NRCan-RNCan.gc.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:59 AM
To: Len Bullard
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] xml:href, xml:rel and xml:type

Len,

Pleasantly surprised!   
> You might be surprised to know I support the idea, Peter.  In 
> days of old, SGML hypertext systems did not require 
> downtranslation to a gencode
> such as HTML and it's family of variants.   We could create a DTD,
> create a stylesheet corresponding to it and using the 
> reserved attributes of the specific hypertext engine (what 
> HTML5 really is), display, navigate and retrieve as well as 
> do various limited GUI
> magicks.   My point of view is that types such as xml:href are
> essentially that:  local engine controls for some n of local.
> 


Thanks for that.

Cheers,
Peter