Re: two failings of XLink

On Friday, September 27, 2002, at 11:30 AM, Norman Walsh wrote:
> The most common example I've seen is:
>
>   <img src="someURI" longdesc="someOtherURI"/>
>
> There are several ways to look at this.

I have another take on this.  I've always thought the above was really 
bad markup design.  Because this is after all the *World Wide* web, and 
you might want your description in more than one language, and you 
might want to make audio versions available for the blind and so on.  
The XLink approach could be as follows (you could get by with less 
markup assuming some defaulting):

  <img xlink:type="extended"
   <src xlink:type="locator" xlink:href="someURI"/>
   <src xlink:type="locator" lang="EN" xlink:href="desc-EN.html"/>
   <src xlink:type="locator" lang="JP" xlink:href="desc-JP.html"/>
   <src xlink:type="locator" xlink:title="Audio" lang="EN" 
xlink:href="desc-EN.wav"/>

Now, "longdesc" is typically not used.  But if it were widely used, the 
XLink formulation seems like better markup to me.

I also think that if Jane X. WebDweeb ran across this and thought the 
effect was cool, she'd do a "View Source" and figure out what was going 
on in about 2 minutes flat; but I guess that is the core of the 
disagreement.  -Tim

Received on Friday, 27 September 2002 14:53:14 UTC