Re: XLink 1.1: Xlink vs "legacy" linking

* Norman Walsh wrote:
>Take any markup language, FooML, with elements that have some
>semantics.
>
>Take any markup language, BarML, with global attributes that have some
>semantics.
>
>Combine FooML+BarML.
>
>If BarML claims that its semantics win then you lose interoperability.
>FooML applications that don't understand BarML will do the wrong thing.
>
>If BarML claims that its semantics lose then you lose interoperability.
>BarML applications that don't understand FooML will do the wrong thing.

If neither FooML nor BarML say which semantics win you don't have any
interoperability in these cases that you could "lose", and if BarML
says which one wins you gain interoperability among FooML+BarML
implementations.

>The only spec that can say what happens is FooML if it acknowledges
>the possibility that BarML attributes will be used.

This would lead to a situation where some FooMLs say they win and some
FooMLs say XLink wins, I don't see how that would be a good model; we
should rather define this for all "legacy" linking mechanisms in the
same way.

In any case, if you think FooML specifications should define how they
interact with XLink, please write that into the draft.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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Received on Tuesday, 24 January 2006 21:50:43 UTC