John Cowan writes:
>  Simon St.Laurent scripsit:
>  
>  > I think the notion is that XLink was originally a toolkit for
>  > describing linking semantics, which used an architectural forms
>  > [based|like]
>  
>  An architectural form *exactly*.  That's where the attribute-renaming
>  and link-type (which is really element-renaming) stuff comes from.

Sure - they just didn't bring in the whole machinery for AF.  The XLink
work is described as a particular case for XLink, not a more general
system.

>  > In later drafts, post-namespaces, XLink became just a vocabulary. 
>  > To use XLink, you must use attributes in the XLink namespace.  
>  
>  It occurs to me that the shift from SGML-style renaming to namespaces
>  is essentially like the shift from uucp email addressing to domainist
>  (@-based) email addressing.  We've gone from an environment where mail
>  is routed based on the best discoverable path from here to there,
>  to a system in which every mail destination has an absolute name
>  which says nothing about delivery.
>  
>  Almost everybody, except perhaps Peter Honeyman, agrees that this is
>  an improvement.

Email didn't face scoping issues or the infinite hall of tautological
mirrors that is the URI universe.  I don't think the comparison is
plausible.

-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com

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