RE: A modest hyperlinking proposal

Hi Jeni,

>I take it, then, that the difference that you were referring to
>between <a> (xml:href) and <img> (xml:src) was one of actuation

I think of it like CSS. HTML has a "default stylesheet", which provides
guidance on how different elements should be styled. Implementations are
free to follow or diverge from the default stylesheet in whatever way makes
sense.

Similarly, one common interpretation would be:

xml:href => xlink:actuate="onLoad" xlink:show="replace"
xml:src  => xlink:actuate="onRequest" xlink:show="embed"

but a major point is not to hard code it.

[[
Also, offlist, some have questioned the xml: prefix. The prefix is not a
major point. If you are uncomfortable with it, just mentally replace it with
some other prefix.
]]

The main advantage of this approach is that it captures the author's intent
without getting too specific about the presentational details--and without
needing to squirrel stuff away in a DTD.

Thanks,

.micah


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeni Tennison [mailto:jeni@jenitennison.com]
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 1:33 PM
To: www-tag@w3.org; Micah Dubinko
Subject: Re: FW: A modest hyperlinking proposal


Hi Micah,

> There's really two major kinds of hypertext linking: the equivalent
> of html <a>, and the equivalent of html <img> (or <object>). Could
> this be the 80/20 point?
>
> What if there were two new kinds of simple links, both identified by a
> single attribute:
>
> xml:href for <a>-style links
> xml:src for <img>-style links

Sweet :)

> The xml prefix is chosen because I think links have special
> importance to the Web
>
> The presence of either of these single attributes indicates a link
> between the local element and the remote resource indicated. It does
> _not_ provide any hard guidance on what to do with the link (thus no
> 'show' & 'embed' attributes). User agents are free to (as they do
> now) interpret and process the link in whatever way makes sense.

I take it, then, that the difference that you were referring to
between <a> (xml:href) and <img> (xml:src) was one of actuation --
when the link is traversed -- rather than what you do with whatever
you find at the other end? (Whether you replace or embed is the other
obvious difference between the two...)

> This also, I believe, addresses the HTML Working Group's objection
> to having the limit of a single attribute per type. While it's true
> that there can still be at most a single xml:href attribute, there
> is also only a single way to do the default activation of a link.
> Similarly for xml:src, there is only a single source of content for
> the link.

So in XLink terms, these would cover actuate="onRequest" and
actuate="onLoad" but not actuate="none" or actuate="other", which I
think is reasonable. HLink introduced actuate="onRequestSecondary",
but I guess that's beyond the 80% point?

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/

Received on Monday, 30 September 2002 17:19:01 UTC