Re: [dgd@cs.bu.edu: BOS confusion (analysis; suggestion to resolve Newcomb/Bryan conflict)]

At 02:52 PM 1/3/97 -0900, W. Eliot Kimber wrote:
>So XML is within its rights to say the token following the "#" must be the
>ID of an element in the document.  Cool.

Except that bec. XML lives w/o DTD's it doesn't know which attributes are ID.

I think we could do quite well with a very simple notation for these
extensions which includes simple query and tree location abilities.  The
extension is parsed similar to the path portion of the URL in that it is a
"/" separated list of specializers/filters.  If the specializer is a number,
pick that subelement.  If not it must conform to a <name>=<value> form where
<name> is an attribute name and <value> is an attribute value you are trying
to match to.  (this explanation is rushed bec. I want to beat traffic
home... sorry)

an example might be

http://over.there.com/hay/down/here.xml#1/3/ID=FOO/3

which gets the 1st subelement of the root, then gets it's 3rd subelement,
then selects the subelement with an attribute with name "ID" and value
"FOO", then get's that elements 3rd subelement.

There is no provisions for mixed content, bec., in my opinion, last months
discussion proved that to be too big a bag'o worms to be worth the effort
required to come up with all the special rules people will want.

My above quick proposal is simple and will do most of what people will want
without resorting to anything more than a single URL.  It will always
resolve to an element, unless it happens to resolve to something like a
queryloc, which is further resolved to be something smaller/other than an
element...


-derek

"that which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from which it
follows
 that irregularity - that is to say, the unexpected, surprise, and astonishment,
    are an essential part and characteristic of beauty" - Charles Baudelaire

Received on Friday, 3 January 1997 19:24:41 UTC