Re: Anchor terminology

At 10:15 AM 12/26/96, Jon Bosak wrote:
>[Peter Flynn:]
>
>| I agree fully that it is high time we reclaimed some of the remoter
>| linguistic vagrancies of HyTime, and that we need to do so in a
>| language understanded of the people. My problem is that users tend to
>| think of links in terms of direction, whether or not any
>| directionality is implied: so "link end" still retains connotations of
>| "target" and anchor retains connotations of "source".
>
>Well, connotation is in the mind of the beholder, I guess.  "Anchor"
>started out with a directional connotation (although I think with some
>historical investigation you might find some people who thought that
>"anchor" meant "source" rather than "target"), but the vernacular
>usage fostered by HTML calls both ends "anchors".  <A HREF> is on one
>end and <A NAME> is on the other, and they are both <A> (anchor)
>elements.

   I would also note that the senses of the terms you use have been in use
since the 60's in the Hypertext research community. And, of course,
multi-ended links are frequently non-directional, so that the confusion (if
it occurs), ill be unlikely to persist.

  -- David


I am not a number. I am an undefined character.
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David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
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Received on Thursday, 26 December 1996 16:59:58 UTC