10.3. Link Semantics
A link describes a connection between two
resources. These resources may or may not be XML documents, but even
if they are XML documents, the relationships they have with each
other can be quite varied. For example, links can indicate
parent-child relationships, previous-next relationships,
employer-employee relationships, customer-supplier relationships, and
many more. XLink elements can have
xlink:title and
xlink:role attributes to specify the meaning of
the connection between the resources. The
xlink:title attribute contains a small amount of
plain text describing the remote resource such as might be shown in a
tooltip when the user moves the cursor over the link. The
xlink:role attribute contains a URI. This points
to something that somehow describes or annotates the remote resource.
For instance, it might indicate the MIME media type of the remote
resource by pointing to a registration page for the type at the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), such as http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/application/xml.
For example, the xlink:title attribute of this
novel element specifies that the text comes from
Project Gutenberg, while the xlink:role attribute
points to the Project Gutenberg home page.
<novel xlink:type="simple"
xlink:href="ftp://archive.org/pub/etext/etext93/wizoz10.txt"
xlink:title= "The complete text of the novel from Project Gutenberg"
xlink:role="http://promo.net/pg/" >
<title>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</title>
<author>L. Frank Baum</author>
<year>1900</year>
</novel>
As with almost everything else related to XLink, exactly what
browsers or other applications will do with this information or how
they'll present it to readers remains to be
determined.
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