6. Addressing & process model issues

[Sorry, I sent this but didn't see it; my apologies if you get 2.]

The picture again:

<BOOK><A NAME="foo" HREF="http://x.com/y/z.html#SEC1">Click here</A></BOOK>
|------------------------------p0-----------------------------------------|
      |------------------------p1----------------------------------|
                    |----------p2-------------------|
                          |----p3------------------|
                          |----p4-------------| |p5|

<BOOK><SEC ID="SEC1">Thank you for clicking to get here.</SEC></BOOK>
|------------------------------q0-----------------------------------|
      |------------------------q1----------------------------|

Note that
a. the linking element p1 is contained in a document, p0
b. the locator, p3, is segmented in standard URL fashion into p4 and p5.
c. the resource, q1, is contained in a document, q0

This raises three issues, two strongly linked.  If you'd like to address
one of these, please use either 6.1 or 6.2 below for your subject line.

6.1 Are linking element source documents interesting?

Since a link is asserted by an element, the element by definition must
appear in a document.  Let's call this the "linking element source 
document".  In many cases, the identification and address of the source 
document are of great interest in correct processing of a link.  Among
other things, authentication and authority issues are of great import
when the link is to something like financial information.  In laypersons'
terms: who said so?

Does the linking element source doc need to be discussed in the XML link
spec, and do we need to specify any particular required behavior or 
metadata concerning it?

6.2 Locator fragments and traversal process model

In the web, when processing "http://x.com/y/z.html#SEC1", the server
returns all of z.html, and the client navigates to an <A NAME="SEC1".

In the ERB's terminology discussions, there was considerable time spent
on the issue of whether this locator fragmentation and process model are
artifacts of one particular addressing scheme, or are a general enough
pattern that XML Link should formalize (and include terminlogy for)
one or both of

 a) locator fragmentation into containing object locator and 
    contained locator specifier
 b) a traversal process model with explicit server/client division of
    labor

What do you think?

Cheers, Tim Bray
tbray@textuality.com http://www.textuality.com/ +1-604-708-9592

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 1997 18:35:08 UTC