Re: anchor awareness (was Re: Richer & richer semantics?)

Tim Bray writes:
| 
| It seems obvious from Steve & Eliot's remarks that we might as well adopt
| the Hytime nomenclature and define "anchor" to be something that is 
| actually participating in a link relationship.  It's easy to explain and
| understand, and is totally unambiguous; definitely in the XML style.  (And
| web-head friendly; an HTML anchor *is* in fact an anchor when it's being
| used; the fact that it's not when it's not doesn't really muddy the waters).

Hytime-anchor is one way to view the matter.  But to many in our target
audience, <a name=foo> </a> is an anchor whether or not it's pointed to, 
and it isn't a Hytime-anchor unless it is pointed to.  

So if we say that "anchor" means "what Hytime calls an anchor" 
we will probably find it necessary to come up with a term 
to describe what "anchor" presently means to many people.  It is 
useful to have a term for anchors-the-author-provided-in-case-
anyone-wants-to-link-to-them.  

Now is <a href="http://www.textuality.com/sgml-erb/mprdv.html">foo</a>
a Hytime-anchor 
 - if Tim's server is down?  
 - if Tim removes the document?
 - if the URL were misspelled? 

And if byte range 1001--2001 in that document can be addressed, is that 
byte range (not distinguished by anything in the document itself) an 
anchor?

(I'm just asking; these are things that will have to be explained.)


Regards,
    Terry Allen    Fujitsu Software Corp.    tallen@fsc.fujitsu.com
"In going on with these experiments, how many pretty systems do we build,
 which we soon find outselves obliged to destroy?" - Benjamin Franklin
  A Davenport Group Sponsor:  http://www.ora.com/davenport/index.html

Received on Monday, 23 December 1996 14:05:51 UTC