Re: [xml-dev] Re: Native XML Interfaces

XLink was and always has been a partial solution at best, and at worst it has been extraordinarily counterproductive. XBRL to me is a very good indication of what happens when XLink is used with abandon - hideously complex documents that were expressed in XML but were so heavily linked that even an XML database struggles with the joins, split across five or six different documents, and relying typically upon relational tools to generate. It would have been a good candidate for RDF except for the fact that RDF was mostly an academic exercise when the spec was produced, and now the language is too heavily entrenched to change.

I actually have a suspicion that RDF may end up enjoying a renaissance on the web, and that in turn may very well put some pressure back into the question of linking. If I create a construct like

then this provides a declarative hook for linking with semantics attached, which really was one of the key benefits of linking in the first place.

Kurt

On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 5:38 AM, Rushforth, Peter <[email protected]> wrote:

Thank you Liam for this opening ;->

> Of course, arbitrary XML in the Web browser was scuppered by
> . lack of XSLT and JavaScript integration (a W3C #fail, "we didn't do
> APIs")

I agree that programmability of XML without XSLT is difficult.  But it
is (apparently) possible.  And I think many XML devotees would even program in
DOM, if their work was useable in browsers.

However, XLink has hampered adoption just as much as lack of XSLT,
for the reason that a) it is complicated and as len says, authors don't
do complicated unless required by law,

> . no simple way for web crawlers to know how to index XML
> documents and produce meaningful snippets (collective #fail)

and b) as a result of that
XLink complexity XML can't be readily crawled and hence XML, being opaque
to search engines, essentially doesn't exist on the web.

So I renew my Campaign for Real Links TM.  ;-)

> . no way to include JavaScript in non-XHTML XML (financial
> #fail, because you can't put ads or tracking code in the XML)

Links could be the way.  Why, a browser might be able to rely on
 <link xml:type="application/javascript" xml:href="..."/>

as a way of referencing js from non-HTML.

Regards,
Peter Rushforth

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