The packageref attribute

[Norm Tovey-Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

Hi folks,

At the last TC meeting, we decided that I should add a packageref
attribute to the elements that can be inside a packagesynopsis so that
they can refer back to the synopsis even if they arenât logically
contained inside it.

How should that work?

1. Make it an IDREF attribute, like linkends. Thatâs tempting except
   that in 5.2, the elements that have linkends actually have
   âcommon.linking.attributesâ so they can use either linkend or
   xlink:href.

2. Ok, do that. Well, thatâs tempting except that we donât usually do
   that on block elements. It would appear to give the various synopsis
   elements the semantics of âthing you can click onâ; it would have not
   just xlink:href but all the other xlink:* attributes as well. I
   suppose we could hardcode xlink:actuate to ânoneâ, but Iâm not sure
   anyone would care.

3. The only âblock element with linksâ I can think of is annotation. For
   the âannotationsâ and âannotatesâ attributes, we punted the question
   and made them text attributes. That leaves the semantics up to the
   processor. You donât get any kind of link checking during validation,
   but at the same time, you can have annotations in separate files and
   you donât get broken link errors. The semantics of annotation is
   explicit about this, an annotation with no referents doesnât apply;
   Iâm not sure thatâs what weâd want for packageref.

4. Wait a minute, the packagesynopsis isnât (necessarily) identified by
   an xml:id at all! Itâs identified by its <package>. It definitely
   shouldnât be a IDREF! This pushes validation even further into the
   processing tools, but theyâre pretty capable these days.

On the weight of 3 and 4, and for simplicities sake, I think
âpackagerefâ as an optional text attribute is the best answer.

Anyone want to argue for something else?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norman Tovey-Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>
https://nwalsh.com/

> The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is
> generally employed only by small children and large nations.--David
> Friedman

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature