Re: 3.1 b-h: BEHAVIOR

At 12:01 02/03/97 -0800, Tim Bray wrote:
>At 03:23 PM 02/03/97 +0700, James Clark wrote:
>>I have two problems with this:
>>- I'm not convinced that all combinations of SHOW and ACTUATE make sense,
>>for example, SHOW=REPLACE ACTUATE=AUTO.
>
>I agree that this combination may not be useful, but it does "make
>sense" in that it's clean & clear what it means; as soon as you hit
>this link, traverse it and replace the current doc with the results.
>Actually, it might have a use - sort of a user-controlled redirect;
>consider what happens if you replace a document on the web with
>
><title>go to new location</title>
><a XML-LINK="LINK" SHOW="REPLACE" ACTUATE="AUTO"
> HREF="http://new.com/new-location-of-this-doc.html">

It seems pretty bizarre to me.  If the user puts this pair of values in a
link accidentally, they are going to be pretty suprised to find it behaving
like a redirect, especially if the link is buried somewhere in the middle of
the document.

Since you agree that PUSH should be separated out from ACTUATE, that leaves
6 combinations of SHOW and ACTUATE.  There doesn't seem any need for the
functionality of SHOW=REPLACE ACTUATE=AUTO, which leaves at most 5 useful
combinations.  It would seem simpler to me to have a single attribute with 5
possible values.

James