Revised: Re: Arch Doc: New section on embedding links in representations

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Here is a second draft of text for the new section 4.5. It attempts to address
a few comments that I received.

  Hyperlinks in Representations
  
  One of the greatest strengths of HTML as a resource representation is
  the ability to embed cross references (links) inside it. The
  simplicity of <a href="#foo"> as a link to "foo" and <a name="foo"> as
  the anchor "foo" are partly (perhaps largely) responsible for the birth
  of the hypertext Web as we know it today.
  
  Simple, single-ended, single-direction, inline links are not the most
  powerful linking paradigm imaginable. But they are very easy to
  understand. And they can be authored by individuals (or other agents)
| that have no control or write access to the other end point.
  
  More sophisticated linking mechanisms have been invented for the web.
  XPointer allows links to address content that does not have an
  explicit, named anchor. XLink allows links to have multiple ends and
  to be expressed either inline or in "link bases" stored external to
  any or all of the resources identified by the links it contains.
  
  All of the current common linking mechanisms identify resources by URI
  and optionally identify portions (or views) of a resource with the
  fragment identifier. The almost universal appeal of linking between
  resources suggests that:
  
    Inventors of new representation formats SHOULD provide mechanisms
    for identifying links to other resources. Representation formats based
    on XML SHOULD examine XPointer and XLink for inspiration.
  
  The common need to point into a resource, that is, to identify some
  portion of its content (or some view of its content) besides the
  entire, monolithic resource suggests that:
  
    Inventors of new representation formats SHOULD provide mechanisms
    for identifying portions of their format. This can most often be achieved
    by describing the fragment identifier syntax for the media type
|   that identifies their resource format. Representation formats based
|   on XML SHOULD use at least the XPointer Framework and XPointer
|   element() Schemes for their fragment identifier syntax.
  
| If a future revision of RFC 3023 identifies the XPointer Framework,
| element(), and perhaps other ancillary schemes as the fragment identifier
| syntax for XML documents, authors will be able to rely on at least those
| schemes for all XML documents.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

- -- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM    | Proprietary data is the root of
XML Standards Architect | tyranny.--Britt Blaser
Web Tech. and Standards |
Sun Microsystems, Inc.  | 
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Received on Monday, 23 June 2003 12:47:41 UTC