Re: DOCBOOK: Re: Linking in DocBook V5.0

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Yann Dirson wrote:

> 2. "xlink:href" is, well, much less sexy than "linkend", and the name
> does not really reflect the semantics attached to the attribute as
> much as "linkend" does - and my guess is that "href" originates from
> HTML, and that W3C decided not break compatibility in XHTML, right ?
> Although it's cool for XHTML authors, I'm sure it would be as cool for
> DocBook authors not to have compatibility broken either.

There is another issue with using xlink:href compared to linkend.
linkend attribute is of IDREF type. So if you want to check consistency
of your inter-document links, you just run validation on your document.
Some XML editors are even capable to provide you with a list of already
defined IDs when you are inserting new link.

But when using xlink:href you must use URI. So inter-document link will
look like something like (using fragment identifier which is compatible
with XPointer):

<xref xlink:href="#some_id_in_doc"/>

This link can't be checked by validation, you must check it when
processing document by stylesheet or some clever XLink processor (if
there is any). 

Considering validation and comfortable editing issues I'm not sure
whether removing linkend in future is wise. But having two attributes
(linkend, xlink:href) for doing almost same in parallel brings many
troubles and uncertainity in processing as Norm pointed earlier. It is a
hard decision. 

					Jirka

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  Jirka Kosek  	                     
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