Real World XML

XLinks and XPointers

It's hard to imagine the World Wide Web without hyperlinks, and, of course, HTML documents excel at letting you link from one to another. How about XML? In XML, it turns out, you use XLinks and XPointers.

XLinks let any element become a link, not just a single element as with the HTML <A> element. That's a good thing because XML doesn't have a built-in <A> element. In XML, you define your own elements, and it only makes sense that you can define which of those represent links to other documents.

In fact, XLinks are more powerful than simple hyperlinks. XLinks can be bidirectional, allowing the user to return after following a link. They can even be multidirectional—in fact, they can be sophisticated enough to point to the ...