Updating XLink?

The XLink Rec, as written, requires the xlink:type attribute on all
XLink elements[1]. It's the xlink:type that tells the link processor
what to do. When XLink was developed, I think we imagined that a DTD
default could almost always provide a value for xlink:type and authors
wouldn't ordinarily have to provide it.

But in reality, documents don't always have a DTD, and even when they
do, lots of applications don't read the external subset. That means
that authors can only rely on conformant XLink processors to do the
right thing if the author provides the xlink:type attribute on every
XLink'd element:

  <link xlink:href="http://..." xlink:type="simple">...</link>

In retrospect, it seems obvious to me that an element that has an
xlink:href but does not have an xlink:type should be treated as if it
had a "simple" link type.

It seems like a simple, easy change to make in a 1.1 spec. That
probably means it's impossible :-), but does anyone else have the will
to try?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/#markup-reqs
-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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