Re: locating capabilities vs. anchor awareness

At 12:28 PM 12/23/96 -0800, Derek Denny-Brown wrote:
>How difficult the anchor awareness problem is depends on the richness of the
>locator model intended to be used.  David (and others) requested the ability
>to locate data which has no ID.  How far do people want this to go?  A full
>query model a.k.a. HyTime, where anything can be located and if HyTime can't
>then you just use an external handler with QueryLoc (which used to be
>NotLoc, for "Notational locator").

This is a good point and we shouldn't lose sight of it.  I tend to assume
that queries will be used for addressing, both because it's right powerful
and because the Web allows it today.  But Derek's point is well taken:
limiting our addressing power makes anchor-awareness much more tractible.

In my hyperworld view [sorry Terry] I assume queries are allowed and
therefore assume that there will be a class of anchors for which
pre-knowledge of anchorness is unknowable.  My impression is that Steve N.
tends to the opposite world view, in which all anchors should be (and,
ideally, must be) known in advance.  I think these two views reflect
focuses on different use scenarios, not fundamental differences about what
hypertext is or how things like HyTime should work.

Cheers,

E.
--
W. Eliot Kimber (eliot@isogen.com) 
Senior SGML Consulting Engineer, Highland Consulting
2200 North Lamar Street, Suite 230, Dallas, Texas 75202
+1-214-953-0004 +1-214-953-3152 fax
http://www.isogen.com (work) http://www.drmacro.com (home)
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Received on Monday, 23 December 1996 16:15:45 UTC