Links to DOM Ranges (was Re: argument for deprecating BLOCKQUOTE in canonical HTML/XHTML)

Note that quotes could overlap one another and cut across the 
document structure. This can be handled via separate references to 
the start and end of the quote and is essentially the same as a DOM 
Range. If the referenced document doesn't have anchors in the 
appropriate places, we need a way of describing where the anchors 
are in the referenced document. A candidate for this is XPointer, 
which while it was developed with XML in mind could also be applied 
to tag soup given the unambiguous DOM tree obtained using Hixie's 
proposed parsing rules. This may seem a bit of a stretch for some 
people, but there is already an implementation of XPointer for 
Mozilla, see

   http://xpointerlib.mozdev.org/

"XPointerLib allows you to create and resolve XPointers in W3C DOM
  Documents. Creation is implemented more fully than resolution.
  For any valid DOM Range or Mozilla Selection object, a function
  in the XPointerLib will create an equivalent XPointer."

Another possibility is to use a server-side service for resolving 
the link and turning it into some thing appropriate for display by 
the browser, for instance, using Ajax invoked by a web page script.

The XPointer fragment identifier syntax is backwards compatible in 
that existing browsers will just display the document for the URI 
ignoring the fragment identifier. This would provide a reasonable 
fall back if the user has disabled scripting.

The great thing about this is that it doesn't require any changes to 
HTML, and could be applied to HTML4.

  Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett

On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Olivier GENDRIN wrote:

>
> (whoops, missed the list. I have to get used to the gmail interface)
>
> On 4/2/07, Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net> wrote:
>> A) Quotes will need to be nested within one
>> another, for often one quotes a source which, in
>> turn, quotes a third party; is redefining the Q
>> element as neither an inline nor block element,
>> but as a "flow" element, equal to this task?
>
> Same mechanism than <ins>, <del> :
> http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/text.html#h-9.4.
>
> We could extent it to the <div>/<span> question.
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 4 April 2007 11:11:18 UTC