XLinks and Validation

They have: 18 posts

Joined: Jul 2005

My first jump into XLinks isn't going so well. They work in Mozilla (one of the few browsers that support XLinks) despite the fact that the code is invalid. What am I doing wrong?

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Wow, that DOCTYPE is hellish complicated! It's really difficult to tell what's switched on in there and not.

What about writing a simple XML document with an embedded home XLINKS DOCTYPE just to check you're doing things right (although I've had an extensive look at your code and can't find anything wrong according to the specs). Or is there an XLINKS DTD out there you could use? I've Googled, but all I find are arguments!

The only thing I can think of is that the DOCTYPE simply doesn't contain what you need it to, although am a bit out of my depth on this subject compared to your good self!

Am uncertain about your SVG too, Opera definately supports that standard to a high level of conformance, so when the SVG on your site doesn't work in Opera and the validator complains about it I'd definately suspect there's something wrong in the code.

Sorry this isn't much help, but might point you in vaguely the right direction, should lead to an interesting discussion either way!

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They have: 18 posts

Joined: Jul 2005

JeevesBond wrote: The only thing I can think of is that the DOCTYPE simply doesn't contain what you need it to, although am a bit out of my depth on this subject compared to your good self!

I'm flattered, but I'm no XML guru. I was under the impression that XLinks did not require a DOCTYPE, that they could be intergrated into any XML markup.

Quote: Am uncertain about your SVG too, Opera definately supports that standard to a high level of conformance, so when the SVG on your site doesn't work in Opera and the validator complains about it I'd definately suspect there's something wrong in the code.

Opera 8.5 doesn't have particularly large SVG support (SVG 1.0 Tiny, I believe). I'm using Opera 9 Preview and it displays as it does in Firefox 1.5.

He has: 29 posts

Joined: Jan 2006

xlinks are xml websites? and i should get around to learning more about SVG.
maybe i need to go back to school (w3schools that is)

They have: 18 posts

Joined: Jul 2005

ilovefrontpage wrote: and i should get around to learning more about SVG.
maybe i need to go back to school (w3schools that is)

Absolutely.

JeevesBond wrote: Oh, cool. How stable is it? And where might one go to procure such a peice of software?

It crashes occasionally. But the fact that it's fast-loading (slightly faster than 8.5, I think) and resumes sessions, it's kind of a redeeming factor.

Quote: The problem of validation still remains though, I'm pretty sure it's something related to the dtd not including xlinks. Have you tried anything else nadamt - writing your own simplified dtd?

I don't know how. I'm trying to learn XML Schema online, but the tutorials are too complicated for me to follow. It doesn't help that authors feel compelled to write their example codes in some homemade XML, rather than XHTML (which I'm sure will be the host markup for the majority of XML languages).

Quote: Seems that you can't put an xlink within a p tag, which would make sense (might have to look at the dtd to find the answer to that one), it also doesn't your usage of xlink:a.

Either way, I'm none the wiser. Had any luck at your end?

No. I've tried removing the prefixes and the only thing that happens is that the xlink no longer displays.

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Well xlinks is indeed an XML application. You can use them in websites for simple hyperlinks, but their capabilities are a lot more extensive, two way and chained links for example.

There isn't much out there about xlinks, apart from the spec and a lot of arguing about usage. This kind of thing isn't going to mature for another few years at least.

Quote: I'm using Opera 9 Preview and it displays as it does in Firefox 1.5.

Oh, cool. How stable is it? And where might one go to procure such a peice of software? Smiling

The problem of validation still remains though, I'm pretty sure it's something related to the dtd not including xlinks. Have you tried anything else nadamt - writing your own simplified dtd? Maybe the validator doesn't support it? I always thought it was just an xml validator and if the dtd supported what you were doing it would be happy?

What about trying a different xml validator (as long as it does more than just check for well-formedness), like this one http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/xml-check.html Got some interesting results back from that, seems the W3C dtd is wrong to start! Then I see:

Quote: Warning: Start tag for undeclared element xlink:a
in unnamed entity at line 85 char 918 of http://www.nadamt.xmgfree.com/index.xml
Warning: Content model for p does not allow element xlink:a here
in unnamed entity at line 85 char 918 of http://www.nadamt.xmgfree.com/index.xml

Seems that you can't put an xlink within a p tag, which would make sense (might have to look at the dtd to find the answer to that one), it also doesn't your usage of xlink:a.

Either way, I'm none the wiser. Had any luck at your end?

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