Re: 3.4 New Item: unify simple and extended links

Tim writes:
>  During the meeting of March 1st, the ERB agreed to package up xlink
>  locators in subelements.  Jean Paoli pointed out [but I have agreed 
>  to bring this forward since he's on the road] that the declarations
>  and attlists for simple and extended links are VERY similar; and it
>  might be appealing to allow one locator to exist within the
>  start-tag of an extended link, such that an extended link is just
>  a simple link with child elements.  E.g.
>  
>  <a role="3-way" href="#lab1"><extra href="#lab2"><extra href="#lab3"></a>

I appreciate Jean's observation, but I think it's an opportunity we'd
do better to pass up.

As I read this, depending on the declaration in force, EITHER a is of
metatype XML-LINK=link, in which case it's a simple, two-resource
link, one of which is #lab1 and the other itself, OR it's of metatype
XML-LINK=xlink, in which case it's an extended, three-resource link,
resources #lab[1-3].  I think that's seriously confusing -- the
improvement in clarity of being able to read the metatype off the
instance syntax seems to me to be worth a lot, and we'd lose that if
we take Jean's suggestion.

ht

[Note:  Once again I'm getting mail from this list in a VERY
disorganised and delayed fashion, so I may be out of sync. here, if
so, sorry.]