xmlhack: HLink working draft arrives

The HTML Working Group has published an initial Working Draft of HLink: Link Recognition for the XHTML Family, offering an answer to looming questions about the role of linking in XHTML.

HLink:

"provides XHTML Family Members with the ability to specify which attributes of elements represent Hyperlinks, and how those hyperlinks should be traversed, and extends XLink use to a wider class of languages than those restricted to the syntactic style allowed by XLink."

HLink addresses a wide range of conflicts between the style of linking that XLink mandates and existing XHTML practice, and also provides a generic approach to permitting the resolution of such conflicts in any XHTML (or perhaps XML) context.

Steven Pemberton, HTML Working Group chair, described a variety of situations where the XLink approach may not be optimal. Norm Walsh previously summarized a number of issues around XLink. Discussion of these issues has appeared on a number of forums, including xml-dev, www-html, www-forms, and www-tag.