Re: Last Call review of XML Pointer WD Version 1.0

Steve DeRose wrote:
> 
> Paul Grosso wrote:
> > 2.  As long as XPointer can address any point in an XML document,
> >     you can give two XPointers and allow the application to figure
> >     out how to interpret them as specifying a range.
> 
> I cannot find any new arguments in your posting, although the WG has
> repeatedly decided against your position on this.
> 
> You still have not, as far as I can see, ever addressed the scenario where
> the average user drag-selects something and says 'make link' or 'make
> annotation' -- most things one can drag *are* ranges: not anything you can
> point at with XPath.

Just to point out an alternative possibility, the Amaya browser/editor
handles this case (and the equivalent cut range and paste range cases)
by performing a tree balancing operation such that the selected (or
inserted) region is well balanced and the entire document remains valid
wrt content models and so on. I conceed that this is actually quite a
lot of work to implement, although once implemented it is just a couple
of API calls to use.

> Support for this user action is specifically called out in our
> requirements. More important, it will literally be a million-time-an-hour
> event on the Web -- the sine qua non of annotation -- are we to leave it
> crippled?

But this of course calls for altering the document; in the case of
annotation of someone else's document (the common case as Steve points
out), this is unlikely to be possible. For an editing scenario, though,
it could well be the right thingto do (and is easier to implement if the
only concern is maintaining well-formedness rather than validity).

> What's wrong with that? Here are a few of the problems:
> [ Steve's span(child(A),child(J)) omitted for brevity ]

> I hereby reclaim the high moral ground of simplicity.
> 
> I propose that any future suggestions to push addressing functionality up
> from XPointer to XLink show worked-out examples. 

Thanks for the summary, which seemed to me totally conclusive.

--
Chris

Received on Thursday, 16 December 1999 10:51:44 UTC