- From: Peter Murray-Rust <Peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 22:23:34 GMT
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
In message <199705171509.LAA05066@ids2.idsonline.com> "Eric Johnson" writes: [... a lot of very important questions about link terminology ...] The more I have been thinking about LINK the more unresolved issues I think we have, and I would very much like knowledgeable comments about what we all agree and where we start to differ. Because I think in concrete terms, I would like answers about link terminology, applied to an example. If nothing else it would help me get my program right. :-) Here's the simple example. I shall omit all ACTUATE and SHOW at this stage. <!ATTLIST A XML-LINK CDATA #FIXED "SIMPLE"> <CHAPTER> Once upon a time there was a <HOUSE ID="h1"> in which lived <BEAR TITLE="Father" ID="b1"><BED XML-TYPE="hard"/></BEAR> <BEAR TITLE="Mother" ID="b2"><BED XML-TYPE="soft"/></BEAR> and <BEAR TITLE="Baby" ID="b3"><BED XML-TYPE="OK"/></BEAR> </HOUSE>. One day <GIRL TITLE="Goldilocks"/> came to a <A HREF="#h1" ROLE="A" TITLE="houseLink">charming little house</A> but the <A HREF="ROOT,DESCENDANT(ALL,BEAR)" ROLE="B" TITLE="bearsLink">three bears</A> were not at home. </CHAPTER> The semantics of the elements are undefined. Firstly I believe there are two independent SIMPLE links, OK? LINK: ROLE=A: This link has a TITLE (label) = houseLink Does this link have one or two resources? It locates a part of the document - a HOUSE element, which contains #PCDATA, BEAR (BED), BEAR (BED), #PCDATA and BEAR (BED). This is a single resource? I am not clear whether it has another resource. If so this is EITHER: #PCDATA ("a charming little house") OR an A element containing #PCDATA. Which? LINK: ROLE=B: This link has a title 'bearsLink' IMO this link locates THREE independent resources, BEAR (b1), BEAR (b2) and BEAR (b3). This is not a span, as these could be anywhere in the document. It is impossible to tell by looking at LINK ROLE=B what the form of the resource(s) are. Therefore I would simply say that (ALL,*) locates a resourceSet and not a resource. Going through the rest of the terminology, I would call an 'A' element a *linking element*, the value of the HREF a *locator*, the value of the TITLE a *label*, the process (*if any) initiated by clicking on 'A' a *traversal*, the whole A element an *in-line link* and there are no out-of-line links and no multi-directional links. The link formatting would be application dependent. It could: paint the content of A blue (as in HTML) draw an icon derived from ROLE or TITLE The question of resources is particularly important and we need urgent clarification here. P. -- Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection Virtual School of Molecular Sciences http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/
Received on Tuesday, 20 May 1997 18:03:55 UTC