Re: XPointer ranges cost effective?

Steve DeRose wrote:

>If we delete ranges, we cannot support our most basic requirement:
> identifying typical user selections in order to support hyperlinking,
> annotation, and the other hypertext activities for which we were
> chartered.

Ranges could be supported at a higher level, as a kind of extended link.

It is not clear why pointing to two locations belongs to XPointer rather
than XLink. That seems more an architectural decision rather than one
dictated by logical neccessity. For example, why should the source and
the destination of a drag operation (an example in the spec) be an
Xpointer rather than a couple of XPointers (i.e., a complex link)?

Implementors who want simple links and do not need ranges may avoid
XPointer and use html:a or smil:a or just implement Xpaths. That would
be unfortunate.


Rick Jelliffe

Received on Friday, 31 December 1999 09:04:39 UTC