Re: XLink and X2X

Hello Graham,

I think you will be pleased to learn how we resolved some Last Call issues, 
because they are essentially in your favor.  (What I'm describing here is 
from a post-Last Call draft that's not public yet.)

Before, a single overloaded attribute did both jobs; if you wanted to 
create unique arc pairs or change the behavior on one of a set of similar 
pairs, you had to invent spurious new roles.  Now, roles have been 
separated out from "arc labels"; an arc label is just a token that you can 
choose to assign to resources one-to-one or one-to-many, and the from/to 
attributes refer to them instead of roles.  Even if two resources have the 
same role, they can have different labels.

         Eve

On Mon, May 08, 2000 at 01:44:37PM +0100, Graham Moore wrote:
> >
> > Hi Daniel,
> >
> > I've been working on the next release of X2X which I intended to include
> > compatibility with 21/02/00. I was please to see the removal of
> > actuateDefault etc from xlink:link, but have some concerns about the new
> > role of 'xlink:role' with regard to the arcs.
> >
> > My general feeling is that the arc structures are instances and should be
> > specified as such. I have no problem with some syntax that can create
> > multiple unique arcs. But with the use of role as the identifier there 
> is no
> > way to specialise as there is no longer a way to uniquely address an 
> anchor.
> >
> > Given:
> >
> > <extendedlink>
> >   <loc xlink:href="..." xlink:role="parent" xlink:title="p1" />
> >   <loc xlink:href="..." xlink:role="parent" xlink:title="p2" />
> >   <loc xlink:href="..." xlink:role="child"  xlink:title="c1" />
> >   <loc xlink:href="..." xlink:role="child"  xlink:title="c2" />
> >   <loc xlink:href="..." xlink:role="child"  xlink:title="c3" />
> >   <go xlink:from="parent" xlink:to="child" actuate="user" />
> > </extendedlink>
> >
> > The above generates a number of arcs. If I change a property of an arc 
> after
> > processing this markup, such as on one of the parent child arcs I want the
> > actuate to be "auto" then  if I try and re-serialise the link 
> containing the
> > arcs I am unable to do so.
> >
> > I think that the change should be made such that the arc markup can address
> > ID's and Roles. This will allow declarative rules to create multiple links
> > but allow easy refinement and correct reserialisation of the link and its
> > arcs.
> >
> > In general by not having the unique ID the practice of the link 
> authoring by
> > refinement becomes extremely complex.
> >
> > I hope that these comments are not to late to be considered.

--
Eve Maler                                    +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems XML Technology Center    elm @ east.sun.com

Received on Monday, 8 May 2000 17:19:13 UTC