Re: In lieu of multiple attlists: LINK?

At 12:43 21/2/97 +0100, Steve Pepper wrote:

>It seems to me that this is PRECISELY the kind of use for which LINK was
>originally intended: the association of processing with structure in a
>modular and eXtensible way. It provides the perfect, SGML-compliant way
>of making existing documents XML-processable without having to modify
>the DTD or document, and without having to invent new syntax.

Thats exactly why its there, and why for years people have been using it to
allow fixed processing control attributes to be associated with elements.
The question is, which of the XML link attributes are fixed and which of
them must be user variable. So far all the examples have only shown the one
fixable attribute, that showing the XML link type. But does this work with
variable ones, such as locator and caption? Unfortunately I don't see how a
strictly SGML-confornant link-based solution can deal with these. Therefore
we are back at the concept of using PIs as a temporary fix untill multiple
attlists are allowed. Here I have another problem. Whilst <?ATTLIST ...?>
looks nice, aren't we supposed to be using <?XML to identify XML-specific
PIs? Therefore we would need to make the initial format <?XML ATTLIST ....?>
and then repace the <?XML by <! at a later date, and ?>  by >.
----
Martin Bryan, The SGML Centre, Churchdown, Glos. GL3 2PU, UK 
Phone/Fax: +44 1452 714029   WWW home page: http://www.sgml.u-net.com/

Received on Monday, 24 February 1997 08:29:36 UTC