Re: 3.4 New Item: unify simple and extended links

At 18:29 1/3/97 -0800, Tim Bray wrote:
>Some problems come up:
>
>- is the locator that's in the parent element somehow distinguished
>  or special, as opposed to all those in the child elements?

In some cases they will have a different significance, in others they may
not. One useful difference I could envisage is that fragment identifiers in
the embedded elements could refer to the document identified by the
container, rather than to the document they are embedded within. e.g.

<a href="oii/oiistand.htm">OII Standards and Specification List
<a href="#SGML">SGML</a>
<a href="#XML">XML</a>
</a>

The list of pointers to relevant places in the OII Standards and
Specification List could then be displayed as a menu whose title was the
contents of the containing link and whose entries were the contained anchors.

>- since a link containing another link <A href="foo"><IMG SRC="BAR"></A>
>  is different from an extended link, we'd still need the archform-like
>  attribute to tell them apart

A simple FORM=SIMPLE and FORM=EXTENDED attribute that defaults to SIMPLE is
all that is needed. All extended links need the extra attribute to trigger
the embedding. 

The problem of what to do with existing HTML links that include embedded
images is difficult in that such elements need to be identified as
FORM=EXTENDED, which can only be done by analyzing the context. (This can be
done easily on any SGML parser that supports LINK!)

>- it would be appealing, in an xlink with locators in child elements, to
>  use ROLE or HRTYPE attributes in the parent linking element to
>  establish defaults for all the child elements... does having a
>  locator in the parent screw this up?

Given the above example I would use role as follow:
<a href="oii/oiistand.htm" ROLE=Menu Behaviour=Pop-Up>
OII Standards and Specification List
<a href="#SGML" Role=MenuItem Behaviour=selected>SGML</a>
<a href="#XML" Role=MenuItem>XML</a>
</a>

I would contend that role and locator can serve a useful role in all situation.
----
Martin Bryan, The SGML Centre, Churchdown, Glos. GL3 2PU, UK 
Phone/Fax: +44 1452 714029   WWW home page: http://www.sgml.u-net.com/

Received on Sunday, 2 March 1997 03:04:33 UTC