RE: Hypermedia - Why

On July 25, 2012 08:18, David Carlisle wrote:
> On 25/07/2012 13:10, Rushforth, Peter wrote:
> > I think XML needs hypermedia affordance vowels, so that as a web 
> > software developer, I can define a domain-specific 
> vocabulary in any  
> > subset of the XML family of specifications, using the 
> domain-agnostic 
> > hypermedia vowels in my hypermedia affordances, and web component 
> > developers, especially clients, will be able to rely on the 
> > definitions of the vowels and write their software to take 
> advantage 
> > of the architectural style of the web, including URIs, content 
> > negotiation / representations, meaningful media types in message 
> > headers, and obviously, hypertext as the engine of 
> application state. 
> > In the latter case, application/xml could be enough for a 
> hypermedia 
> > application, whereas today, it is not sufficient because 
> there is no 
> > hypermedia implied by that media type.
> 
> 
> I still don't think that "why" description says enough. If it 
> is for the web are you expecting web browsers to implement 
> this? (That seems unlikely, and if that is a requirement you 
> need to get them on board sooner rather than later). 

Well, it would be nice if browsers did allow access, and I admit the
whole schem would work better if they were on board.  But so far, they
have not thought this interesting enough to participate.  Not sure why.
Mostly though, code-on-demand, in the form of javascript, and now xslt, can extend
the functionality of browsers.  It would be awesome if XML could be
the media type on the other end, but mostly so far it is turning
out to be json.   I personally like to work with XML because it
(is | can be) as simple as you want to make it.

> If it is 
> for encoding hypertext why is it important to have a 
> domain-agnostic markup for a link but not for a paragraph?

<p/> you mean?  Isn't that domain-agnostic?

If you mean, why would you need xml:href etc in a domain specific 
media type, the answer is, IME, because this part of the markup is
specific to connections between web resources, and the infrastructure 
of the web is organized around connections between resources.

So a web of data can contain any old data connected by connection-specific
markup.  

> 
> There needs to be at least one use case where having this 
> helps and would work better (or even as well as) using xhtml 
> and the link markup.

What link markup are you referring to?

Peter

Received on Wednesday, 25 July 2012 12:33:57 UTC