Re: 5.1 Extended Link Groups

At 12:33 PM -0800 3/4/97, Tim Bray wrote:
>5.1.a Shall we support a mechanism for a document to contain a list of
>other documents that someone thinks ought to processed with it, in order
>to find linking elements pointing into the first document, and in general
>create a web of related documents?

Yes.

>5.1.b If so, shall we say anything normative about whether this must be
>done?

I think we should say that it should be done unless overridden by the user
or unless it fails to fetch some documents (broken links). We should make a
requirement that document sets not processed together should somehow
indicate to the user that the display is "incomplete".

In other words we can't ensure that applications do what they are asked,
but ought to require that they inform the user if they are not so doing.

>5.1.c Should we use an SGML element, a PI, or some other construct to hold
>this list of documents?

yes. It should be recursively defined, too.

>5.1.d If we use an element, what should it be called?

companion.

I like the term companion document.

>5.1.e If we use an SGML element, should we have subelements per referenced
>doc or just a token-separated list of entity names in a single attribute?
>In either case what should the subelement (if any) and attributes be
>called?

companion/companions -- depending on structure.

we could use the same name for a PI if we use that method. I think elements
of one form or another are nicer, however.

PIs to extend XML are one thing, but XML link is, in some sense, the first
XML application people will see so we should play nice...

  -- David

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David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
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Received on Friday, 7 March 1997 11:07:57 UTC