Re: Links to other specs (Was: Re: svg2: Remove SVGElement.id since it is defined on Element.)

Erik Dahlström wrote:
> This change depends on DOM4, which is fine, but I'm wondering if there's
> any way we could get the links to DOM4 inserted automatically, like we
> do for svg definitions, interfaces and so on. It's confusing that the
> links in the IDL goes to DOM2 Core (e.g for Element) and not to DOM4. I
> guess it's ok to just update the links now, but that doesn't help future
> places in the spec that might need to reference the same, and right now
> it's easy to make the external links inconsistent by accident.

The change from depending on DOM 2 Core to DOM4 was already made some 
time ago.  A bunch of links in the spec to Element, Node, etc. were 
already being generated and being linked to DOM4 (although an older 
draft).  I've just updated definitions.xml for the things we are 
referencing to the latest WD.

> I think we probably have a number of out-of-date links to other specs
> scattered across the chapters. We will need to deal with that situation
> sooner or later. I expect that it will get trickier to track and update
> those the more specs we reference.

Yes.  If we use the referencing method suggested by the W3C Manual of 
Style (which I have tried to do), i.e. like:

   The foo must be bar ([BARSPEC], section 1.2.3).

then updating the section numbers is a pain.  I wouldn't mind if we 
changed the referencing to remove the section numbers.

For updates to more recent publications of a given spec, doing a 
search/replace on the definitions.xml file isn't too bad.  Assuming the 
anchors remain the same.

Received on Sunday, 9 February 2014 22:48:55 UTC