Re: 2.1 a-d: Link Recognition by Reserved Attribute?

On Wed, 12 Feb 1997 16:53:57 -0500 Tim Bray said:
>2.1.a Should we allow link recognition via a reserved attribute?

I assume this means "as described in sec. 2.1 of the draft of
31 January", so <blort XHL-="tlink">xxx</blort> is identified as
a 'tlink'.

Yes.  And (hard minimalism) this should be the only sanctioned
mechanism.  There is no way around allowing this; there is no need
for anything more.

>2.1.b If so, should we generalize this and say that it's an AF?

Only if (a) it really is an architectural form (I remain so thoroughly
confused by every HyTimer's attempts to explain AFs that I decline to
express an opinion) and (b) we can say what architectural forms are
in terms clear enough to stand on their own.

On second thought (see next question) no, we should not say so, even
if both conditions hold.

>2.1.c If so, should we provide an introduction to AF's?

Essential, unless there is more tutorial information, of better quality,
for allowing people to learn about AFs than I have yet had the good
fortune to encounter.

We should *also* refer to 10744, of course.

Come to think of it, if we *don't* call it an AF, we don't need to
explain what AFs are, and we can save ourselves the trouble.  A
brief note in the appendix titles Notes for Rocket Scientists will
suffice; refer to the Extended Facilities Annex there and say
wisely but inscrutably "The alert reader will have noted that these
are architectural forms as defined in ...".

>2.1.d If we allow such recognition, what should the attribute be, and
>      what should be the values for each element type we define?

It should be named 'XML-form' (lose the trailing hyphen, at all
events), and it should allow the specification not only of the
GI of the architectural form but also the specification of which
attributes in the actual DTD correspond to which attributes of the
AF.  If you think it makes sense to allow users to name their own
element types, but not the attributes, think again.

The values should be whatever names we give the architectural forms
and their attributes.  I'd be happy if they were recognizable words,
or recognizable abbreviations of words, in some human language,
which rules out [a-zA-Z]link.  I realize this means 90% of the
serious proposals are gone; sorry.


-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
 ACH / ACL / ALLC Text Encoding Initiative
 University of Illinois at Chicago
 tei@uic.edu

Received on Monday, 17 February 1997 18:49:11 UTC