Re: Relationship Taxonomy Questions

bosak@atlantic-83.eng.sun.com (Jon Bosak) wrote:

> 2. I am quite convinced (and was before the ERB asked Eliot to start
> this thread) that it is vital to make a strong distinction between
>
> * Link structure or topology [...]
> * Linkend location/addressing [...]
> * Link meaning [...]
> * Link behavior, which can be divided into
>   A. What the user sees:
>      Presentation before link traversal
>      Presentation during link traversal
>      Presentation after link traversal
>   B. What the system sees:
>      State before link traversal
>      State during link traversal
>      State after link traversal
>
> I personally have never seen anything specified in connection with a
> link that could not be subsumed under some combination of these
> categories; if anyone else can think of something, I sure would like
> to know what it is.

Another category of link behaviour is "transclusion" or
"simultaneous presentation" linking.  For example,
HTML's <IMG SRC="..."> can be thought of as a transcluding
contextual link; and HyBrowse can be configured to transclude
the contents of an ilink anchor at the point where another anchor
appears (useful for inlining annotations, etc).  Other types
of links could specify simultaneous presentation, e.g.,
"whenever the user lands on Section 2.3, display Figure 4
in a pop-up window and play the audio file xyzzy.wav".

With these types of links traversal is automatic, so there's
no notion of presentation/state before/during/after traversal.

> 2'. In particular, I think that it is of the utmost importance to
> distinguish meaning (relationship typing) from behavior (which
> includes presentation).  I think that the analogy between semantic
> tagging vs. style information in SGML and relationship typing vs. link
> behavior is an apt and powerful one.


Agree!


--Joe English

  jenglish@crl.com

Received on Thursday, 23 January 1997 14:16:54 UTC