Re: xlink:href

Chris Lilley wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> xml:lang identifies the language of the content of the element. But it
> involves using that "syntactically intrusive" xml: so lets define our
> own attribute called lang or la or language or langue or Sprache.

But I can work up many interesting examples of situations I want to know
the language of an element without knowing the rest of its semantics. I
can also think of many examples where I want to know that an element is
a link without knowing the rest of its semantics. But I CANNOT think of
a circumstance where I want to know that an element is a
*presentational* link without knowing the rest of the semantics. Unless
the W3C makes an institutional commitment to use XLink even in
*non-presentational* vocabularies like XML Schema, XSLT, etc., I cannot
reliably use it as a link-detection marker. 

Presentational vocabularies are the *least interesting* customers of
XLink because they are almost always augmented by a stylesheet which
describes the presentational features (including link actuation rules).

If it is only used for half of the vocabularies I care about, then it is
essentially useless. So if the W3C is serious about XLink as the only
syntax for linking, then I will encourage my customers to use it.
Otherwise I won't.
-- 
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Received on Thursday, 4 July 2002 15:54:20 UTC