[XML-SIG] XBEL DTD

[Fred L. Drake]

Marc van Grootel writes:
 >   - make the 'info' element contain zero or more 'meta' tags, this
 >     way we don't have to fight too much about how to name them
 >     and can add new ones without breaking the DTD

  I'm OK with this; I would use a slightly different structure than
you did in the example you give farther down in your post.  I'd
prefer:

	<!ELEMENT meta (#PCDATA)>
	<!ATTLIST meta name CDATA #REQUIRED>

so the markup would be:

	<meta name="frobnitz">my data</meta>

 >   - also allow 'info' in a bookmark so extra data can be associated
 >     with a single bookmark

  OK.

 >   - drop the 'title' for bookmarks and put that into 'url' and
 >     put the href itself back into the 'url' as an 'href' attribute.

  I'm not sure I really like this; for a bookmarks list, the URL
itself really is content.

 >     In the HTML3.2 DTD there's the following quote:
...

  The quoted discussion seems very specific to the HTML spec, and is
not general.  If there's some relevant context I'm missing, please
quote that as well.

 >   - make the 'title' optional too
 > 
 >   - instead of a bookmark a bare 'url' element should be allowed
 >     too. This should be considered a bookmark without a description
 >     and/or info.
 >

 >   - allowing bookmark,url,alias etc directly under xbel

  OK, OK, OK.

I said:
 > > The
 > > machine name, in particular, does not appear to be very useful.  I can
 > > also envision shared-bookmarks applications where the owner may vary    
 > > from folder to folder, so I'd also allow info within each folder.

And Marc replied:
 > I'm not sure but maybe the reason Mark suggested it was so a processor
 > could make certain assumptions. Maybe platform is a better name

  Maybe.  I don't know what sort of assumptions would be reasonable
unless it could be used to check the availability of file: URLs.

 > There's a problem lurking with shared-bookmarks though. Currently id
 > is declared as ID. This means a valid document must have unique
 > id's. Merging different bookmark files may break that constraint.

  Generating new IDs on an as-needed basis would be the best
solution for merging, with the option of it being treated as an error
also being available, but this does not affect the shared bookmarks
application I was thinking of.
  I was thinking of a single xbel instance being access simultaneously 
by several users (presumably through a server of some sort), and all
actions on the instance could be immediately reflected in each user's
UI.  This could be useful in maintaining links shared reference
material.  The info element could be used to store access control
information, approved/unapproved flags, etc.

 > Another use for a meta tag is for adding keywords. When these are
 > preserved it's trivial to put a HTML version on the web and have it
 > handled properly by the search bots.

  And can be used to improve searching by the browser; as the user
visits various pages, any keywords or other useful meta information
could be pulled into the bookmarks database and (optionally)
automatically updated on future visits.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
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