Re: Relationship Taxonomy Questions

David G. Durand wrote:
> 
> At 3:19 PM 1/23/97, Len Bullard wrote:
> >My point is simple:  no normative linktypes.  A way to express a
> >linktype is already available.  It is an element type.  Will these
> >interoperate?  Only if the application programmer understands
> >the behavior implied or noted.  But those are application conventions
> >and do not belong in the normative parts of the XML specification.
> 
> This is rather oversimplified. 

No.  Read Eliot's earlier posts on the subject.

> The addressing mechanisms we are defining
> would be unliekly to work well without explicit support in the form of
> syntactic and semantic definitions of how they should be coded and what
> they should designate.

The addressing mechanisms who are defining?
 

> I finally get it, I think. You don't belive that it's possible to implement
> the indirection from a link to the code to make behavior for the link. 

Nope.  I think is easier to implement a declaration on an attribute 
that hints at behavior than to drag a DSSSL spec through the Internet.

> else you believe that in 10 years we will still have the same set of
> crippled user-interfaces that we have today, and that we won't want to
> change how our footnote links are interpreted without changing (pardon me)
> "every single ****ing document" we've ever created in the meantime.

Nope.  I think a gosub is a gosub and a goto is a goto.  State space, 
not user interface.  Read the MID documents sometime.  Altering the 
documents to get rid of optional attributes is not exactly rocket 
science.  Even SGML, nor will XML enable us to do what you claim 
can be done.  We change them everytime we rehost.  With SGML, 
we change them a heckuva lot less.
 
> Our miserable single browser windows, measly displays, and pathetic and
> disorienting frames are going to be history practically tomorrow. XML can
> do better than to require specific browser behaviours when defining link
> types.

Yes, and VRML has done both already.  You should study it and 
understand what frameworks are, how they work, and why they 
work that way.  Now.  Today.  Not ten years from now.
 
> It has to do better, if it is not to perpetuate in linking the mess that it
> hopes to save us form in document representation.
> 
>    Linking behavior is a "formatting property".

So you say.  But that is yet another religious assertion.

len

Received on Thursday, 23 January 1997 22:40:37 UTC