RE: 11.4 Link XML element

This issue has been repeatedly discussed in the past. Please check the mail
archive for more information.

Below I give a brief summary of the issues and our rational for our design
decision:

We could make the src optional or the dst optional and just say "if one or
the other isn't there then it defaults to the current resource." In which
case the production would be: <!ELEMENT link (src*, dst*)>

Such proposals have been made previously but were rejected because it was
felt that this would needlessly complicate the standard in order to save a
few bytes on the wire. Defaults have a nasty habit of biting one in the ass
so unless there is a major savings (such as in the case of 2xx errors in
multistatus responses) we shy away from them.

		Yaron

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Dylan Barrell [SMTP:dbarrell@opentext.ch]
> Sent:	Tuesday, February 10, 1998 5:46 AM
> To:	'WebDAV'
> Subject:	11.4 Link XML element
> 
> In all the examples in this standard, the src element of a link is the
> same as the resource on which the method was executed. I think that, in
> the name of brevity, the src portion of the link element should be
> optional.
> 
> this element should therefore be defined as
> 
> <!ELEMENT link (src*, dst+) >
> 
> Cheers
> Dylan>

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 1998 16:29:30 UTC