Re: Clarification on the Call for Implementations for the W3C XPointer Candidate Recommendation

I was asked to make a comment in this review forum.  If you wish to have a
dialog on this topic, please CC myself (rayw@netscape.com) and Heikki
Toivonen (heikki@netscape.com).

We do not find xpointer to be a compelling technology.  At this time, we 
have
chosen to implement fixptr instead in our browsers.  At the time this 
choice was
made, it seemed like there were significant IPR issues overshadowing 
XPointer.
There may still be questions regarding the IPR statement, but I am not a 
lawyer.

In any case, fixptr seems much simpler and more directly applicable to our
needs.  I have been told that once we standardize on fixptr, it may be 
difficult or
impossible to later also support XPointer, something about using a comma to
represent a range, so this could be a long-term decision.  There is 
simply no
motivation to implement XPointer at this time.

Consistent with this action, I know of no reason we should support XPointer
as a W3C recommendation generally.

Ray Whitmer
rayw@netscape.com

Received on Monday, 15 October 2001 17:53:10 UTC