Ah I see. I like that actually.
> > Meanwhile, bear in mind that 25 years of hypertext
> > research has proven the value of naming links with simple
> > strings determined by the author, with NO semantics...
>
> Any good references?
Dozens. I have a cubic foot of papers, in fact I believe it contains nearly
every word written on hypertext and hypermedia prior to 1989. However the
HCI references kept at Ohio-State have a far more extensive up to date list.
(Sorry I don't have the URL but last I saw it was at .?.cs.ohio-state.edu).
>The problem is that ad-hoc RELs with no
> semantics are what we have now -- and the result is that hardly
> anyone uses REL.
Another explanation: authors are not encouraged or taught to use it,
as the browsers do not (reliably) show the REL of a link to another,
even as an option (NoteCards browsers *did*, and everyone used them).
>Well-defined semantics for at least some values of
> REL would begin to make it useful, and then it just might be taken
> seriously by document authors.
I disagree. Standard semantics only get in the way. The strength of
the REL mechanism is the ability to build a completely custom set of
link types that match the structure of the document... I agree that
this makes automatic processing harder (although far from impossible)
but at some point you have to decide if you are writing for computers
(and require a small standardized list of well-defined types) or for humans
(and thus require an infinitely-extensible list of linguistically-defined
types). I think those who view the REL as a convenience for automatic
processing of documents, something that should be seen only by the software,
are missing the point, and have misunderstood the semantics of hypertext.
-- Craig Hubley Business that runs on knowledge Craig Hubley & Associates needs software that runs on the net craig@passport.ca 416-778-6136 416-778-1965 FAX Seventy Eaton Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4J 2Z5