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

Norman Walsh wrote:
>...
> 
> No. Fair point. Using schemas to add defaulted attributes is exactly
> analogous to using DTDs for that purpose. But...I think it'll be a
> long time before schema processing is as widely deployed (or commonly
> performed) as DTD processing and much more centrally, I think the idea
> of basing this on some sort of schema annotation stuff (rather than
> defaulted attributes) is really unlikely to ever be widely deployed.

Using annotated schemas is just one approach and probably a poor one.

But more to the point, it should seldom be the case that individual 
authors will describe how to map their vocabulary into XLink or RDF. 
Vocabulary developers should do so. Individual authors could add one 
line of boilerplate to their documents:

<html:html xml:linking="http://..../">

 From then on, links "just work" as XLinks (or even better, RDF) but the 
document itself is 100% HTML (or XBRL or FooML). HLink has such a 
facility, as does HyTime.

>...
> | Then maybe *simple* linking would be something to aim for? Like Paul
> | Prescod said:
> |
> |> But XLink is pretty near pessimal along all axes. If links are so
> |> important that they should be burned deep into the syntax then the
> |> appropriate namespace is "xml" and the specification should be VERY
> |> SHORT, VERY SIMPLE and VERY APPLICATION AGNOSTIC. Surely it isn't
> 
> Simpler than my earlier example that *already works in my browser*?
> 
>   <phrase xlink:href="http://www.example.com/" xlink:type="simple">...</phrase>

First, yes we can get much simpler than this:

<phrase exegesis="">...</phrase>

Note how my version moves the whole thing into the domain of the 
end-user and involves no foreign namespaces and "extra" attributes.

Second, when I was talking about simplicity above I was talking about 
simplicity of the overall specification. XLink is 34 pages when it 
should be less than 10 if it is going to be baked into every XML tool on 
the planet (as a truly fundamental linking language should!).

  Paul Prescod

Received on Friday, 4 October 2002 11:27:48 UTC