Re: spec-prod, xmlspec, docbook and Co.

At 01:13 PM 10/17/01 -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
>| > - XMLSpec has more "special purpose" elements (e.g., <specref/>,
>| >   <bibref/>, etc.  where DocBook has just <xref/>).
>|
>| I would suggest to keep the XMLspec format here (and in general to always
>| prefer the "special purpose" elements over a general element). I don't know
>| about the XSL but the DOM generator is doing different manipulation 
>depending
>| on the element (specref, xspecref or bibref).
>
>I tend to favor the other approach myself, allowing the link behavior
>to be determined by the thing it points to. But I don't feel very
>strongly about it.

This isn't practical in the general case.  For example, how would you be 
able to tell, by looking at the thing linked to, that a reference to 
another W3C specification is normative vs. non-normative?  I realize that 
XMLspec currently doesn't make this distinction, but it's something that 
has been brought up a few times.

The association may have semantics that neither of the endpoints has on its 
own.  XLink and RDF teach us this. :-)

         Eve
--
Eve Maler                                    +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems XML Technology Center   eve.maler @ sun.com

Received on Wednesday, 17 October 2001 17:25:29 UTC