RE: More on xlink-23

Hi Simon,

Simon said:
I'll admit that I'm having a hard time understanding the battle.
XLink's interesting and occasionally useful, but I hardly think it's
worth inflicting on every XML spec that happens to need hypertext
linking.

Didier replies:
I do not know if its worth inflicting on every XML specs. What I do know
is that if you have to use more than one XML domain language, it is more
efficient, from the learning point of view to learn a single linking
pattern and to apply it in different languages than it is to re-learn
what's a link for every language. I can understand that anther
organization may decide to do things differently, but that W3C does that
it is confusing and not coherent. If we end up with 30 different linking
syntaxes, I am not sure we made any progresses. Linking documents is an
essential feature if not the most important feature of the web. It
deserve some attention. Up to now, I am not impressed by the arguments
quality against using xlink nor I am impressed by a lack of consistency
from W3C WG. I think it is time that the linking mechanism is examined
with an architectural point of view. After all, like I said, linking is
essential to the web and is its major feature. I think that a group
independent of the WGs has to think about it and make recommendations
from an architectural point of view. In my own opinion, linking is a
major element of the web architecture (in addition to what was already
said in the current work about the other architectural issues).

If for some sound reasons (like for instance users habits or to support
the legacy) we find that xlink:href doesn't work then let's see how href
could become a reserved keyword (without any mention of the xlink
namespace identifier). We made some progress by re-using basic syntax
parsers (i.e. xml parsers) we may accomplish even more progresses by
re-using linking parsers. Two layers are crucial in the context of the
web:
a) basic document syntax
b) linking syntax
If that could be achieved, we'll have a sound foundation for an XML web
(as successor to the HTML web).


Cheers
Didier PH Martin

Received on Friday, 30 August 2002 15:57:00 UTC