Re: Permitting non-indirect links

At 10:48 AM 1/16/97 +0000, Martin Bryan wrote:
>Eliot wrote:

[...]

>>Where the "SOIbase" attribute points to the entity whose on system ID is to
>>be prepended to yours.  Thus, the effective URL of the chain is
>>"http://www.somewhere.com/oii/en/alpha.html".
>>
>>Comes to the same thing and the semantics of URL interpretation are the
>>same, but some might prefer to use entities for this rather than location
>>addresses (for example, because they can put the SYSTEM IDs in catalogs).
>
>For those that don't want to use entities is there any way we can do this by
>stringing together attribute values?

I'm not sure what you mean by "stringing together attribute values".  Do
you mean the values of attributes specified on different location address
elements (as in David's example) or attributes specified on the same
element.  If the latter, I'm having a hard time seeing the management
benefit, although I could see the benefit in separating out the different
semantic components of a URL string (except that, as has been pointed out
in the "URL editing dialog" subthread, it may or may not be useful to
provide that for a syntax as simple as URLs).

There is no HyTime-direct way to say that you want an address to be cobbled
together from a variety of attributes on the same element, but as I've been
saying with stultifying frequency, you can always define a "query" that
will give you the effect, however twisted such an approach might be.  If
XML Link wanted to include four attributes for decomposing URLs, it could
certainly be made understandable to a sufficiently-functional HyTime engine
(e.g., one that supported arbitrary SDQL queries or their equivalent).

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 Friday, 17 January 1997 12:53:25 UTC