[Fwd: XHTML 2.0 and the death of XLink and XPointer?]

 From xml-dev.  The author's concerns seem worth at least looking at. -Tim

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: XHTML 2.0 and the death of XLink and XPointer?
From: AndrewWatt2000@aol.com

One interesting aspect of the recently released first public Working 
Draft of
XHTML 2.0 is the Common Attributes Collection (see Chapter 6 of the WD).

Among the proposed common attributes is the href attribute which, as
proposed, appears (assuming I understand the draft correctly) to be capable
of being added to any XHTML element.

However, XLink 1.0 already defines linking attributes which can be 
placed on
any XML element, not just XHTML elements.

We then appear to have two (competing?) hyperlinking technologies intended
for use on some/all XML elements.

Does it make sense for this competition to continue?

Is the Common Attributes Collection in XHTML 2.0 an indication that W3C is
quietly easing away from support of XLink? Is there a good reason for the
duplication, remembering that the XHTML 2.0 WD explicitly states that
backwards compatibility with HTML and XHTML is not an intention? So what is
the reason for having two families of linking attributes which duplicate
functionality?

Or could it be an indication of a battle in W3C between XLinks and HTML
links?

Is this an issue for the TAG?

Additionally the XHTML 2.0 WD has no indication that I could find of 
support
for XPointer. One wonders why the primitive # fragment identifier is the 
only
(as far as I could see) fragment identifier in W3C's "new generation" 
XHTML?

Are we to continue in perpetuity to be constrained to linking only to
document fragments which a document author thinks are relevant?

Is the absence of mention of XPointer in the XHTML 2.0 WD an indication 
that
the XHTML WG intends to forego in perpetuity the potential benefits of
XPointer?

There are many more questions which could be posed about the place of
XLink/XPointer and XHTML links. In the first instance it might be useful to
know why the XHTML WG is taking this approach and if this potentially duplic
ate functionality makes sense to the TAG.

Andrew Watt

.

Received on Friday, 9 August 2002 11:09:44 UTC