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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: Linking in DocBook (specifically for EBNF, but more generally as well)
Norm wrote: | / Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net> was heard to say: | | me that something else won't come along. But to stick to the point, has | | Xpath been implemented, and how completely? (That is, how do we know | | it solves its problem completely?) | | Given the number of XSLT processors available, I think it's safe | to say that XPath has been implemented several times. Okay. | | | that support XPointer yet in fragment identifiers on URIs, but that's not | | | surprising. I know of some internal use of the #foo shortcut, where a | | | trivial transform is done to turn it into a classic IDREF. | | | | In HTML variants, is it required that NAME atts have values unique | | within the instance (I haven't kept up with XHTML; the HTML 4.0 | | DTD doesn't require it)? (That is, how close to ID/IDREF are we | | getting?) | | Keep in mind that fragment identifiers for HTML (an SGML | application) and XML are different. The #foo and id('foo') | XPointer components, when pointing into an XML document, point | to IDs (i.e., XML ID-valued attributes), not NAME atts on any | specific element. Good. I expect confusion will arise in pointing from XML to SGML, and we might begin to get skew between SGML and XML instances, but if #foo points to an ID I'm happy. | | It would seem we're close; it's unfortunate we can't wait longer | | for the present purpose. | | No one said we can't, exactly. At most, I've said I'd like not | to have to. :-) | | | What worries me here is that we're dipping our toe into the linking | | problem without considering a thoroughgoing change across the DTD, and | | without tool support. We were more conservative in the past. | | Good point. To play devils advocate, I'll point out that we're | discussing this problem in the context of an element with such | extensive processing expectations that tools support would be an | issue even without the linking question. Yes, good point. | But the fact that '#foo' won't work in existing tools, even for | ID/IDREF-type links, is a cause for much concern... | | | I can see that for linking to nonterminal definitions there should be | | only one target to point at, so it would seem safe to go the Xpointer | | route; would we use the same approach to convert all present | | ID/IDREF (not ID/IDREFS) links? | | I'm certainly not proposing that yet. Not before widespread | tools support, anyway. As you said, we've waited five years to | address the general linking issues, I think we can wait a couple | more. Let's put on the agenda for Paris the question whether we'd be willing to convert ID/IDREFs to xlink: if we had tools support (maybe the answer is short; it would be a place to get started on XML linking). regads, Terry
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