Re: Relationship Taxonomy Questions

> If part of my document's text is included through a link, *and the
> document is being displayed*, the included text must be displayed when 
> downloaded so as to display the full text as I intended it, complete 
> with safety warnings, etc.  Else I can't rely on my data format to
> convey my content, and the XML format is useless for practical
> purposes, however interesting it may be for hypertext theory.

If I want to willingly override your "link behaviour specification" 
 to make your document not behave or look right, how is that any different 
than doing the same in a stylesheet? What if I define a stylesheet that
displays "IMPORTANT-NOTICES" in 0 point font. The effect is the same. Your
text is lost, it is my "behaviour specification" (stylesheet's) fault.

I think you have convinced me that we should predefine a "Legal" link type (or 
link type attribute??) that says that the legal meaning of this document 
changes if the link is not followed. That link attribute could be applied to 
both the stylesheet and the "link process specification" in your example.

> | In fact a web walker is a "user agent" that *does* implement
> | link behaviour significantly different than a browser.
> 
> It doesn't display any link behavior or the underlying document to 
> the user, however.

That's right. So it may ignore the link behaviour specifier, just as it would
ignore a stylesheet. I think that that is a good argument for keeping those
behavioural definitions external to the document.

> They have to distinguish beween traversal and inclusion links, else
> they can't represent the  document properly, even in outline.  Note 
> that we don't have text inclusion in HTML.

And without a stylesheet you can't represent the document properly, even
in outline, either. Footnotes become "inlined". Index entries get inlined.
Meta-information looks as if it is part of the title. Etc.

> | choose a document from my "site link map" rather than going through a page
> | and executing the "goto?"
> 
> Your site link map is not my XML document.  

I meant my site link map to be a visual tool that surfs a website and
builds a map of it, using/displaying as much or as little of the semantics of 
the site as I ask it to.

 Paul Prescod

Received on Thursday, 23 January 1997 12:28:25 UTC