W3C
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XLink and XHTML

  • XLink Requirements

    • "2.3. XLink must support HTML 4.0 linking constructs."

    • "B.2: It must be possible to apply XML link semantics to existing documents by modifying the documents' DTDs only, requiring no modification to the document instances themselves."

  • But, adoption of XLink 1.0 in XHTML 2.0 would require modified instance documents. For instance, longdesc from attribute:

    <img src="http://example.org/image.jpg"
 longdesc="http://example.org/imageDesc"/>

    to element:

    <img x:type="extended">
   <src x:type="locator" x:href="http://example.org/image.jpg" />
   <longdesc x:type="locator" x:href="http://example.org/imageDesc" />
</img>

    This might be further simplified to:

    <img x:type="extended">
   <src x:href="http://example.org/image.jpg" />
   <longdesc x:href="http://example.org/imageDesc" />
</img>

    More XHTML/XLink design alternatives.

  • Other considerations:

Stuart Williams, Norman Walsh 4 of 7
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