[ba-ohs-talk] Fwd: Re: [xml-dev] XML, hypertext
There is an incredibly important debate going on at xml-dev. The
following, I think, summarizes some important aspects of the discussion.
The talk on "range algebra" mentioned by Simon is abstracted here:
http://www.extrememarkup.com/extreme/2002/tuesday.asp and discussed further
here: http://xml.coverpages.org/xmlPapers200208.html#NicolCoreRangeAlgebra (01)
>From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
>
>Bob DuCharme writes:
> > But to get back to my original question: what do you see an XML-based
> > hypertext effort as adding, and to what?
>
>Well, actually I want my HyperCard back. ;->
>
>I don't actually see XML or markup as fundamental to hypertext, though
>it certainly looked like the "best way" when I was coming into XML from
>HTML.
>
>(I think I told you at Extreme that I looked at HyTime when I was first
>looking past HyperCard, and convinced myself that markup would go
>nowhere, thereby losing a year I could have spent with HTML - which I
>heard of a week later, actually, because of Cornell's "cello" work, but
>stupidly ignored.)
>
>What I'd like isn't so much "an XML-based hypertext effort" as some hard
>looks at the intersection between hypertext and markup. I think XLink
>has demonstrated that specifying links in markup isn't necessarily a
>natural-feeling process, and XPointer's xpointer() scheme demonstrates
>that specifying endpoints in marked-up documents is also non-trivial.
>
>To go back,
> > What do you see as missing here that needs to be added? Do you want a
> > standard that lets us use the original XML natively on the rendering
> > devices, in which case we need to mix in some presentation
> > information with the structural information? (Which of course sets
> > off a buzzer in my old SGML head...)
>
>I think we've mistaken the odd tools we have for the tools we need.
>There's very little connection between XLink and the style
>specifications, which may be driving your concern about mixing
>presentation and structure. The one document on the subject [1] is
>really pretty exclusively about XSLT-styling, and I don't think anyone
>claims it's a complete answer even within that domain.
>
>There was some really excellent stuff at Extreme that gave me yet more
>ideas and which more importantly convinced me that there's a lot left to
>figure out. I won't try to sell anyone on my Ool stuff, but some of the
>work on overlapping markup made sense to me as a set of tools with
>hypertext specifically in mind, and the range algebra stuff looks like
>some serious firepower for using text as a foundation for hypertext and
>markup.
>
>XML and hypertext are both cool things. I'm not sure that they're a
>natural fit, however, and I'm definitely not sure that we've reached the
>point where it's obvious how best to do linking in XML.
>
>I'd love to see an informal group of people who discuss different
>approaches over time for a while, and possibly some kind of catalog of
>approaches. While I was really impatient early on that XLink took so
>long, I think its long development cycle and current relative
>insignificance give us a good chance to look at alternatives before
>locking into a particular approach.
>
>
>
>[1] - XML Linking and Style - http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-link-style/
>
>--
>Simon St.Laurent
>Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
>Errors, errors, all fall down!
>http://simonstl.com (02)
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