Re: CSS and XLink

On Fri, 30 Apr 1999, Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> The gist of the argument is that 'links' are about relationships,
> and not about traversal paths.

That, actually, is fair enough.

As I understand it, a `link' presumably has to include the following
information:

   A set of n resources (where n > 1)
   The relationships between the resources

For example:

   Document X is the document that logically follows this document.
   Document Y can be used to style this document.
   Documents A, B, C...Y discuss document Z.
   This document was written by A.N.Other.

(although the last example sounds more like RDF than XLink!)

The "relationship" is the equivalent of the HTML "rel" and "rev"
attributes, although obviously more powerful.

The "resources" are the uris pointing to the documents, etc, involved.
In HTML, the href attribute performs this function.

Presumably the "traversal path" is "what happens when the link is
activated", otherwise known as the link's _behaviour_. 

As I see it, that and its presentation are the only things that are in
the scope of CSS/CAS and out of the scope of XLink. Currently (as in,
in the last draft), XLink includes some attributes (actuate and show)
that suggest traversal path information, but does not specify how that
is to be used. In my opinion, these attributes should be left off
XLink, letting DTD authors decide which attributes to use and make
stylesheets to match.


> If the current XLink model survives - describing only sets of
> resources, and not the paths between them, it'll be up to style
> sheets or some other yet-built mechanism to turn links into
> traversable paths.

I have shown how this is already possible using existing proposals
(mainly Cascading Action Sheets).

-- 
Ian Hickson 
U+2642 U+2651
U+262E U+2603 U+263A

Received on Wednesday, 5 May 1999 21:27:37 UTC