XLink - href and fragment identifiers

There seems to be a gab in the XLink spec in respect to fragment identifiers and
empty href values:  According to RFC 2396 an URI containing only a "fragment
identifier" is neither an "absolute" nor a "relative URI", but a "same-document
reference" (cf. RFC 2396, § 4).  So the sentence in § 5.4 which reads: "If the
URI reference is relative, its absolute version must be computed by the method
of [XML Base] before use" should be modified to read: "If the URI reference is
relative or is a same-document reference, its absolute version must be computed
by the method of [XML Base] before use".  Thus corrected, the sentence "The
locator attribute (href) must have a value supplied" in the "Constraint:
Attributes on Locator Element" (XLink spec, § 5.1.2) is superfluous and should
be deleted, because if an XLink processor detects an xlink:href attribute with
no value, it must compute its absolute value, i.e. a reference to the document
containing the XLink element as described in RFC 2396, § 4.2: "... an empty URI
reference within a document is interpreted as a reference to the start of that
document ..."

Dieter Köhler

-- 
=====================================================================
 Dieter Köhler, M. A. - dieter.koehler@ppp.uni-bamberg.de
 Mittlere Kaulberg 22, D-96049 Bamberg, +49(0)951-5190726
 "http://www.philo.de/Philosophie-Seiten/": 1000+ Philosophie-Links
 "http://www.philo.de/VirtualLibrary/14.de.htm": Deutsche Philo-Links
 "http://www.philo.de/xml/": Open XML - XML-Komponenten für Delphi
=====================================================================

Received on Wednesday, 4 July 2001 12:15:18 UTC