XML Fragment IDs

My comments concern the note "Proposal for XML Fragment Identifier Syntax 
0.9". I understand that an XML fragment can be a resource as defined by
XLink 1.0, and this identifier is needed for the hyperlink. 

The current syntax seems to assume that an XML fragment is always one XML  
element. I'd like to expand the syntax to allow different kinds of XML  
fragments, such as those consisting of a sequence or a set of XML elements.
By a sequence of elements, I mean consecutive XML elements.

Say we have the following structure

<section>
  <title></title>
  <subsec>First subsection.</subsec>
  <subsec>Second subsection.</subsec>
  <subsec>Third subsection.</subsec>
</section>

...and we want to have a link pointing to a fragment containing the first 
three child elements of the section element. The third subsec element may 
be irrelevant, or very big, or even inaccessible. We still want to be able 
to read the whole fragment, and nothing more.

This kind of sequence can be identified by using a "range" character, for 
example as follows.

element(section/1::3)

This would identify the first three child elements of the section element. 
The two colons denote a range.

Another operator is needed for fragments that consist of a more irregular 
set of elements. It could be an AND operator of some kind. Ideas ?

Miro

Received on Monday, 22 December 2003 15:00:47 UTC