Thoughts on XLink 1.1

To start I would like to say that I hope the XML WG is going to continue 
the work outlined in the extending XLink 1.0 document[1]. It looks good 
and especially making xlink:type "simple" by default will probably 
spread adoption a lot more.

- I hope the new specification will have a lot less non-normative DTD 
samples (none, if possible) and more actual XLink examples.

- I also hope that XLink 1.1 will provide samples of nested XLinks, as in:

  <foo xlink:href="#foo">
   <bar xlink:href="#bar"/>
  </foo>

... and says what applications are expected to do with them. (This would 
especially be useful for UAs, if the elements have actual content.)

- It would be nice if the relationship with CSS was specified. Does 
:link and :visited match <foo xlink:href="#foo"/>? (I believe Mozilla 
has already implemented it in such a way, but it would be nice if the 
specification defines that relationship.)

Perhaps a non-normative sample style sheet could be included. For 
example, I believe you can implement |show="embed"| using the CSS3 
'content' property. As in:

  *|*[xlink|show="embed"][xlink|href]{
   content:attr(xlink|href,url,contents);
  }

- Which is the link in the following example taking in account that a UA 
has support for both http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink and 
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml:

  <xhtml:a href="foo" xlink:href="bar">test</xhtml:a>

... of course, the same applies to IMG, OBJECT et cetera. More mixed 
namespace examples:

  <xhtml:a href="foo" xlink:show="embed">test</xhtml:a>

  <xhtml:a href="foo" xlink:href="bar" xlink:show="embed">test</xhtml:a>

  <xhtml:img src="foo" xlink:href="bar" xlink:show="embed"/>

  <xhtml:img src="foo" xlink:href="bar" xlink:show="replace"/>

- It would also be nice if the specification makes use of semantic HTML 
instead of using |<b>must</b>| to name an obvious error.

PS: If someone replies to the message and does not CC 
www-xml-linking-comments please do CC me.


[1]<http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-xlink10-ext-20050127/>


-- 
  Anne van Kesteren
  <http://annevankesteren.nl/>

Received on Monday, 14 February 2005 17:05:10 UTC