XLink Rant (Long)

[Daniel Emory <danemory7224@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The original version (1.0) of the XLink standard was
adopted in 2000. A new draft version (1.1, June 2005)
contains relatively trivial changes. 

A summary document which accompanied the new draft
version includes some cogent comments and notes,
several of which are quoted below:

"Everybody has at least one theory to explain why the
XML Linking Language(s) did not catch on, and why the
user community has evidenced such abysmally low
expectations about intelligent hyperlink functionality
in web browsers. I recall Bill Smith speaking in 1998
or so, about the promise of XML linking (saying that
it would) ?bring linking on the web into the 1970s.?
It didn?t happen. Everyone can think of highly useful
(time-saving) hyperlink browsers that implement simple
multi-headed links" (selected by mouse-over or other
means), "inspect a drop-down menu of options, select
the action or link destination you want....We were
doing (all) this with SGML readers ten years ago; why
has it been so difficult to discover a model (with)
the right level of abstraction to support
implementable, standardized hyperlinking? On this
point, I think even Tim Bray should give Ted Nelson
the right to smirk at the markup crowd." (Ted Nelson,
one of the earliest hypertext visionaries, has written
extensively about its potential over the years. And he
would undoubtedly do far more than smirk about the
inadequacies of XLink).

In that same summary document, another commentator,
describing the inconclusive progress of XLinks over
the past 5 years, stated that what was "old hat to the
SGML hypertext crowd was a step beyond the horizon of
most web developers. I don?t know how to bridge that
gap (between capability and current reality). But
until it?s bridged, I don?t think we?ll see great
leaps forward in the Xlink area. It?s cultural and
more than technical." 

What it all comes down to is that the canonical simple
cross-reference link:
             xlink:href="students.xml"
has become the only type that is used in most XML
document instances, despite the fact that the Xlink
standard also includes much more sophisticated link
types such as extended, locator, arc, resource and
title.

By contrast, FrameMaker (since the early 1990s)
implements, in addition to the simple cross-reference
link, 23 robust types of additional hypertext links,
including: Alert, Alert with Title, Named Destination,
Jump to Named Destination & Fit to Page, Jump to First
Page, Jump to Last Page, Go to URL (launches browser
and displays the specified web page), Jump to Page
Number, Jump to Previous Page, Jump to Next Page, Jump
Back, Jump Back and Fit to Page, Open Document, Open
Document and Fit to Page, Open Document as New, Open
Document at Page Number, Pop-Up Menu, Button Matrix,
Message Client (communicates with other applications
and creates a link to a URL), Close Current Window,
Close All Hypertext Windows, and Exit Application.

By inserting graphic buttons with embedded hypertext
commands on FrameMaker master pages, navigation bars
could be easily implemented. I?ve implemented large
FrameMaker hypertext documents in which such
master-page navigation bars were used to provide
buttons such as "Global" (clicking on this button
produced a menu of links to major subject areas, plus
hypertexted tables of contents, indexes and
glossaries), Local (clicking on this button produced a
menu of links to locations within the current subject
area), Previous (jumps to the location of the previous
link), and Next (goes to the next page).

Unfortunately, nearly all of these linking
capabilities (including links on master pages) are not
convertible to PDF, HTML, XHTML or XML. The only
viewing software that implemented all of them was the
now-defunct FrameViewer product. 

The bible of Hypertext is a book entitled
Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook (1991, Library of
Congress Catalog Card Number 90-85588) edited by Emily
Berk and Joseph Devlin (Emily Berk may still be
lurking on this list). It is sad indeed that the
hypertext vision of the future offered in that book
became still-born as a direct result of the HTML and
XML standards movement. 

In a recent post, I cited a similar problem relating
to the deadening effect on document formatting and
layout that resulted from standards such as FOSI,
DSSL, XML-FO and XSL. 

In both cases, the effect of these standards has been
to disincentivize developers of proprietary software
from creating the needed cost-effective, user-friendly
solutions. Fundamentally, overreaching international
document standards developed by committees (beginning
with SGML) seem to have a murderous effect on
innovative solutions, which is compunded not only by
the fact that the evolution of such standards always
seem to lag behind current technology, but also
because the solutions they impose, such as Xlink,
XML-FO and XSL, are retrograde,n awkward and
incomplete.



Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
DW Emory <danemory7224@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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