Reusing anchors

The current (Feb. 2) SMIL draft introduces the notion of anchors
(the SMIL equivalent of an HTML client side image map).

My question is: how can I share anchors across media objects?

For example, say I have a slideshow of 20 images each of which
share 10 links whose spatial location and target never changes.
The SMIL draft has anchors contained within media objects.  If
I have to replicate these 10 links across 20 images, not only do
I now have 190 redundant anchors, but I also have a content
management nightmare if one of those links much change (the
same change must be made to the anchors in all 20 images).

For example, changing the position or target of the second link
in the example below would involve making 20 identical changes
to the second anchor of each of the 20 images.

<seq>
  <img src="slide1">
    <anchor href="http://link1.com/" coords="0,0,50,50"/>
    <anchor href="http://link2.com/" coords="50,50,100,100"/>
    ... remaining 8 links
  </img>

  <img src="slide2" being="5s">
    <anchor href="http://link1.com/" coords="0,0,50,50"/>
    <anchor href="http://link2.com/" coords="50,50,100,100"/>
    ...  remaining 8 links
  </img>

  ... remaining 18 images

</seq>

If SMIL had a concept similar to the HTML 4.0 MAP element then
my twenty images could all reference the same anchor information
using a USEMAP-like attribute (perhaps "anchorset" would be a
better name than map).

<seq>
  <img src="slide1" usemap="#links"/>
  <img src="slide2" begin="5s" usemap="#links"/>

  ... remaining 18 images

</seq>

<map name="links">
  <anchor href="http://links1.com/" coords="0,0,50,50"/>
  <anchor href="http://links2.com/" coords="50,50,100,100"/>

  ... remaining 8 links

</map>

Peter Scheyen, Virtual Modem/Interactive Channel
peters@iChannelTech.com