July 2004
Intermediate to advanced
479 pages
12h 30m
English
Content preview from XML HacksBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
Start your free trial
Explore XLink and XML
XLink and XML Base are implemented or partially implemented by Mozilla. This hack explores these technologies, using Mozilla as a platform.
The XML Linking Language or XLink (http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/) defines a vocabulary for creating hyperlinks to resources using XML syntax. XLink goes beyond the simple linking in HTML and XHTML by adding concrete semantics and extended links that can link to more than one resource. XLink hasn’t really taken off yet, but Mozilla supports simple links in XLink, though not extended links (http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/xml/#linking). Use of XLink is growing, if slowly—see, for example, the use of XLink in the OpenOffice specification (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/6037/office-spec-1.0-cd-1.pdf).
XML Base (http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase/) consists of a
single XML attribute, xml:base, that acts like the
base element from HTML and XHTML; i.e., it
explicitly sets the base URI for a document. A base URI is often
understood implicitly by a program such as a Web browser by the
location of a resource, such as a location on the web or the location
of a file in a directory or file structure. In HTML or XHTML, this
base URI could be set directly with the base
element, as shown in this fragment of XHTML markup (note bold):
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>Links</title>
<base href="http://www.xml.com"/>
</head>
<body>
...You set a base URI explicitly using xml:base, as shown in ...