Re: 1.4 a-c: Basic Terminology

Joe English <jenglish@crl.com> writes:
>[ * * * Warning: HyTime spoken below; feel free to skip  * * * ]
[...]

Well, I must admit that did me no good at all. *urp*

>In this case, the A element can be, in the current
>terminology, one of:
>
>    + <A HREF=...>: a link and a terminus (of that same link)
>    + <A NAME=...>: a (potential) terminus (of some other link)
>    + <A NAME=... HREF=...>:  both of the above.
>
>
>Here the pointer -- the thing which points at something else --
>is the HREF attribute, and there does not appear to be a way for
>this to be pointed at.

I'm mystified. The HREF *attribute* is the pointer? I thought adding the
HREF attribute to the A element made the A _element_ point at the location
indicated in HREF. I don't understand the HREF attribute to be the pointer,
as it's not part of the document content; rather it is markup. I was under
the impression that the anchor's text _content_ (the 'hypertext') became
the pointer -- one doesn't point at markup, one points at content (which
may be delimited by markup). IOW, the text becomes hypertext by being
marked up with start and end tag delimiters that indicate what the text
content is meant to point at.

If an HTML anchor start tag contains both a NAME and HREF attribute, the
text content becomes both the potential target of another anchor (via
NAME), as well as pointing to whatever URL is indicated in the HREF of the
start tag.

    <A NAME="top" HREF="#bottom">go to bottom</A>
    [...]
    <A NAME="bottom" HREF="#top">go to top</A>

This certainly works in HTML. Please show me where I'm mistaken about this
possible occurrence in XML without resorting to HyTime terminology. It
seems strange to me that this should be "impossible" in XML.

Murray

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
    Murray Altheim, Program Manager
    Spyglass, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
    email: <mailto:murray@spyglass.com>
    http:  <http://www.cm.spyglass.com/murray/murray.html>
           "Give a monkey the tools and he'll eventually build a typewriter."

Received on Monday, 3 February 1997 15:07:17 UTC