Re:Link Indirection

At 11:48 AM 1/5/97 +0000, Digitome Ltd. wrote:
>During the Genesis of XML authors might say to themselves:-
>
>"Some XML browsers support DTDs. Some do not. For widest possible coverage
>with my XML docs I should aim at the lowest common denominator XML
>implementation.
>Therefore I will do Hypertext entirely via attributes. Therefore I have to do
>a ton of extra markup in my docs:-(
>
>After the promised land is reached, and all XML browsers support DTDs this
will
>result in a "legacy XML" situation where Hypertext etc. has been hard-wired
>via attributes and thus that much more difficult to maintain :-((("
>
>Is this the case?

I'm not sure what you mean by "do Hypertext entirely via attributes".  I
was only referring to using attributes to map arbitrary element types to
architectural element types recognized by XML browsers (e.g., the linking
and addressing elements defined by the XML Link spec, whatever it ends up
being).  The only other choice is to define all the hyperlinking behavior
in style sheets, which is fine, but requires shipping the style sheets with
the docs (or otherwise defining the association of styles, possibly
pre-defined in browsers, with documents).

Note that the architecture mechanisms defined in the HyTime TC include
defaulting rules that causes elements whose element types are the same as
architectural forms to be assumed to be those forms (lacking more specific
information).  Thus, an XML Link spec that defines a set of architectural
element types will be usable *without* explicit mappings if authors simply
use the same element type names in their documents.

Thus, if XML accepted the default architectural mapping behavior, you would
need the mapping attributes only when your element type names differed from
those in the architecture.

Cheers,

E.
--
W. Eliot Kimber (eliot@isogen.com) 
Senior SGML Consulting Engineer, Highland Consulting
2200 North Lamar Street, Suite 230, Dallas, Texas 75202
+1-214-953-0004 +1-214-953-3152 fax
http://www.isogen.com (work) http://www.drmacro.com (home)
"Rats in the morning, rats in the afternoon...if they don't go away, I'll be
re-educated soon..."                 --Austin Lounge Lizards, "1984 Blues"

Received on Sunday, 5 January 1997 12:01:37 UTC