Re: Arch Doc: 18 Sep: abstract

> What do you mean by "active" versus "descriptive" links?

Active links are actuated by processes that traverse the information
with a hypertext engine.  Anchor href, img src, and stylesheets fall
into this category.  Descriptive links are supplementary information,
such as xmlns or <link>, that establish a relationship between
resources without an expectation that it will be actuated during
normal processing.  Those links might be the focus of other actions,
such as SemWeb stuff, but not hypertext.

> I have kind of thought that "hyper" is associated with generally human
> targetted.  XLink, intended for hyperlinking, has "show" and "actuate" 
> axis
> because of the "hyper" part.

Er, I don't know about that (MOMspider is not human, so I think that
distinction has never held true).  "hyper" is a synonym for "extremely
active", and the reason the UI style was named "hypertext" is because
the rendered text (whether it be bytes, image, or stream) is active in
the sense of being the control-point for actions.  Thus, hypertext
is equivalent to "activetext", where "text" refers to a rendered set
of information.

The word "hyperlink" is just a conjunction of hypertext link, or active
link from a UI POV.

....Roy

Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2003 19:54:42 UTC