Re: Using HyTime Arcform stuff (was Re: Ephemeral XML?)

At 12:45 PM 1/14/97 -0500, David G. Durand wrote:
>At 9:46 AM 1/14/97, W. Eliot Kimber wrote:
>
>
>>Can we stipulate that it is assumed that nobody in this discussion will
>>knowingly suggest that any syntax be required if it can be reasonably
>>inferred?  I believe that's a basic design principle behind XML.
>
>   I'm sorry to be misunderstanding you. I am not trying to willfully
>misinterpret you, but I could propose an additional constraint: that we not
>use syntactic examples of syntaxes that we do not intend to propose. As you
>noted, we were in agreement as to the syntax that we _might_ need, but I
>was unable to see that due to the ancillary HyTime declarations, which I
>took to be a proposal.

Fair enough.  I also see that my statements about not needing the full
syntax were not as clear as they could have been.

[...]

>The problem is that it is more verbose than a declaration. This violates my
>own desire for minimal syntax (though meets my desire to avoid PIs,
>generally). If we are going to use PIs to create an AF declaration, we
>should consider getting rid of the attributes altogether, and using syntax
>like this (not HyTime compatible, unfortunately):
>
><?XML link-arch: ilink clink(a footnote)>

This could be made HyTime (or rather, AFDR) compatible simply by saying
that the *virtual* XML SGML declaration includes:

APPINFO "ArcBase=XML"

Which maps the name used for the "ArcBase" declaration to "XML".  I should
have mentioned that before.

>Where we would interpret this as saying that the link architecture is
>enabled; ilinks should be assumed on <ilink> elements; clinks on <a> and
><footnote> elements; other sub-forms not in use. This could even be
>supplemented by something like:
>
><?XML link-arch: default> or <?XML link-arch>
>
>to make all link elements the same as their AF names.

By the rules of "architectural markup minimization", by default, elements
are automatically assumed to be the form that matches their elmeent type
names in the absence of an explicit attribute (you can turn this off if you
want to, although it's usually what you want). 

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 Tuesday, 14 January 1997 13:14:34 UTC