Re: xpointer

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

I'm not sure how one is supposed to have "discussions" on these
comments lists, but I'll try replying and see what happens.

At 00:32 2004-07-07 +0000, comment-form@oasis-open.org wrote:
>Comment from: ehennum@us.ibm.com
>
>Esteemed TC members:
>
>I'd like to offer a concern about the proposal
>to move to an XPointer for fragment locations.
>
>Hoping that's interesting,
>
>
>Erik Hennum
>
>
>> > 1. General practice for addressing....
>> 
>> The issue here is that in an XML processing context there is only one
>> *standard* for representing addresses of components within documents,
>> namely XPointer....
>> 
>> The XPointer spec provides a formal syntax for declaring the addressing
>> scheme you're using for fragment identifiers, e.g.:
>> 
>> foo.xml#xpointer(/bar/baz)
>> 

Actually, you have to be careful with terminology, because what "xpointer"
means has changed over time.

There are three W3C Recommendations related to XPointer:
XPointer Framework http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-framework/
XPointer element() Scheme http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-element/
XPointer xmlns() Scheme http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-xmlns/

None of them allow the syntax shown above which uses the "xpointer() scheme":
XPointer xpointer() Scheme http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-xpointer/
which is not a W3C Recommendation--in fact, it is merely an old (2002) working draft 
that is no longer under development and currently has little chance of being picked
up for further work any time in the forseeable future.  So it is certainly
not a "standard".

If I were to consider using XPointer in DITA (or any other application), I
would suggest using the Framework and Element() scheme only which would
allow one to reference any element in a document.  Since I don't see that
this works well for accessing elements via DITA's pseudo-IDs [Am I correct
that the DITA "id" attributes aren't ID attributes?], I'm not sure
I'd suggest trying to use XPointer for DITA.

paul