Describing relative paths - but with unknown target

Still working on my package descriptions (developing an RDF schema to describe software packages).

A package consists of files; the location of these files can be described using xlink:href with a URI relative to the package itself (as distributed, as well as once installed. I think that in this scenario it is not necessary to define a base path (xml:base) since the package (distribution) itself provides the base path. (Is this correct?)

Things become more complicated when I need to refer to required files on the user's system (not included in the package but required for its functionality). Essentially they would still be relative paths - but relative to the "installation path" of the application my package is an extension for. The actual installation path will be different for different users; still that installation path will also be the target installation path for my package, so (more or less): a path relative to the distribution == a path relative to the installed package AND a path relative to the installed package == a path relative to the user's application path.
I'm not sure if I would need to define a base path for required files in this case (strictly speaking they can't be relative to the distribution of my package since they're not included - but *will* be relative to the package once installed correctly).

A related question is: is there a way to self-reference an RDF file, so that (for instance) I could use an RDF statement *within* the file to state something like: all xlink:hrefs in this file are relative to [some logical description of "application installation path"]?

Suggestions, anyone?

Received on Saturday, 18 January 2003 10:10:27 UTC