Re: [Docutils-users] XLink as a solution for references

[Schimon J. <sc...@fe...>]

Guenter. Good night.

I am not yet familiar with Docutils Generic DTD.

Thank you for the references.

Please. Read the rest of the message further.

On Tue, 7 Oct 2025 18:41:51 -0000 (UTC)
Guenter Milde via Docutils-users <doc...@li...>
wrote:

> Dear Schimon,
> 
> On 2025-10-06, Schimon Jehudah via Docutils-users wrote:
> >> On 2025-09-28, Schimon Jehudah via Docutils-users wrote:  
> 
> >> > XLink might be helpful for both, Atom and (X)HTML, in order to
> >> > set accurate links to references.    
> 
> I don't think using XLink will give advantages to (X)HTML, as browser
> support is missing. (Except inside SVG, but even this is deprecated.)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLink#Implementations
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Reference/Attribute/xlink:href
> 

XLink is fine to them, for toying with SVG, because they fear that with
XLink people would migrate to PPN (P2P) systems instead of having those
spyware software that are referred to as "(spider) web browsers".

Please read the attached article by Mr. Hank Simon (September 29, 2000).

Source: http://intelligententerprise.com/000929/supplychain.shtml

I do not listen to them. They have also depectated RSS, both versions
of Microsummaries (Plain text and XML template addon), and they most
recently try to deprecate XSLT.

They have conspired to establish the so called "web extension" system
which, unlike XPCOM and XUL, has no support for TCP nor UDP and
therefore trying to censor FTP, Gemini, Gopher, IRC, SSH, and XMPP.

They are not an authority of anything, and I do not use those sso
called "internet browsers".

As far as am concerned, they terrorise us by trying to perpetuate
HTTP and centralized means, and they try to suppress FTP, Gemini
and Gopher, and also decentralized means such as eDonkey2000, Freenet
(Hyphanet), and Gnutella. They have been doing this for more than
twenty years.

https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/mozilla.xhtml#hydra

As brother Dr. Kent Hovind used to say about such people: They should
quit their "jobs" and switch tires or do something else useful.

> I don't know about Atom but it is not listed as a specification
> supporting XLink
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLink#Within_other_specifications
> 

XML allows to mix elements and namespaces, so I suppose that it be
feasible, especially with the assistance of XSLT.

Also, XLink has no format of its own, and it is meant to be
incorporated into existing formats.

Read the attached article from Mr. Hank Simon.

> The Docutils Doctree documentation may gain a bit, when we could add a
> formal description of internal links (the "refid" and "refname"
> attributes) as an "xlink:href" with an XPath fragment specifier that
> for the "refid" value "my-id" would mean 'the element that contains
> "my-id" in the space-separated list of IDs that is the value of its
> "ids" attribute.'
> https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/doctree.html#refid
> 
> ...
> 

I will explore this.

> >> Can you provide a **minimal** working example of what you want to
> >> achieve?  
> 
> > Yes. I can.  
> 
> > I am working on a publication platform of which all produced
> > documents are XML (Atom Syndication Format), and these documents
> > are transformed to XHTML with XSLT stylesheets.  
> 
> How do you produce the XML (Atom) documents? 
> With a custom Docutils writer or with XSLT from a standard output
> format?
> 

The system produces and Atom Syndication Format document, which
receives the XHTML data from Docutils; Docutils converts *only the
content* to XHTML.

The process can be observed at.
https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/Rivista/src/branch/main/rivista/publish/xhtml.py

Docutils conversion.
https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/Rivista/src/branch/main/rivista/utility/document.py

Atom formation.
https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/Rivista/src/branch/main/rivista/parser/atom.py

> > As this platform utilizes The Atom Syndication Format, there is
> > element "atom:link" which is almost identical to element "link" of
> > HTML.  
> 
> > The element "atom:link" is utilized to list related resources (i.e.
> > references) and attachments (i.e. enclosures).  
> 
> > I am interested to link to those links in a local fashion (i..e
> > utilizing the sign hash/number/pound (#), utilizing XSLT
> > directives.  
> 
> ...
> 
> I have only basic understanding of XML and a vague idea of XSLT so I
> cannot help with details. 
> 

I think that it would be nice for Docutils to have features for XML.

In this case, of utilizing Atom Syndication Format with XSLT, XSLT is
mostly an XHTML document with XPath directives to extract data from an
Atom document.

> I suppose it should be possible with XSLT to convert the "ids"
> attribute, https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/doctree.html#ids,
> to an "id" attribute (maybe just discarding eventual "alias IDs" and
> keeping just the first ID), e.g. ::
> 
>     - <citation ids="elk-70" names="elk:70">
>     + <citation id="elk-70">
> 
> Then, a "refid" can be replaced by a "refuri" (or "href") attribute
> with simple fragment syntax::
> 
>     - <reference name="Elk:70" refid="elk-70">Elk:70</reference>
>     + <link href="#elk-70">Elk:70</link>
> 

I will explore Docutils Generic DTD and see what can be done.

Thank you for this vital information.

> 
> Günter
> 
> 

Best,

Schimon