Re: Why not XHTML+RDF? was Re: Links are links

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/ Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> was heard to say:
[...]
|   (3) Document-oriented languages (e.g. XHTML, DocBook...) use XLink
|       if they want, another linking solution if they can't, but it
|       doesn't really matter anyway because most applications that
|       *present* them are hardwired to know what is a link and what
|       isn't in any case, based on the natural language spec.

Yeah, but this works in Mozilla *today*.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<article xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<articleinfo>
<title>XLink Test</title>
</articleinfo>

<para>This is an
<phrase xlink:href="http://www.example.com/" xlink:type="simple">XLink
Example</phrase>.</para>

</article>

I don't care how popular DocBook becomes, it ain't ever going to be
popular enough to be recognized natively by Mozilla.

| But I think that if we want HLink (or whatever it turns into --
| NeXLink ;) to be more widely deployed than XLink, we have to look
| seriously at the reasons that XLink *isn't* more widely deployed. I
| suspect that it's because for users, the cost of incorporating XLink
| into their markup language is greater than the benefit of application
| support they get from doing so, and that on the vendor side there's
| simply no user demand.

I think it's a simple chicken and egg thing. We live without it by
doing designs that don't require it or using JavaScript to hack it
together. We're so used to living without it, we don't make a lot of
demand on vendors to support it (though apparently we got through to
the Mozilla folks). Conversely, if vendors supported it, I think it
would be a lot easier for most folks than JavaScript so they'd very
quickly do the 45 seconds of head scratching in view source and start
using it themselves.

| Getting something that's easy for users to
| include -- in their schema, in their CSS or wherever -- will be the
| deciding factor.

Maybe. A lot of folks have trouble with indirection, the overwhelming
majority will never write a schema, and I guess at the end of the day
sophisticated linking is really just a "nice to have".

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

- -- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM    | Our culture peculiarly honors the act of
XML Standards Architect | blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue
Sun Microsystems, Inc.  | and intellect.--Lionel Trilling
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Received on Friday, 4 October 2002 06:38:58 UTC