MEP: External Info Links

On 6 June 2015 at 08:56, Shaun McCance <shaunm at gnome.org> wrote:
> = MEP-XXXX
> - External Info Links
>
> This page outlines a way to link to external pages within informational
> link sets like topic and seealso links, and proposes a way to specify
> title, desc, and other information for those pages.

Yes! This would be really useful!

> == Background
>
> Mallard allows semantic information links for a number of things. Most
> notably, this is the basis for Mallard's topic/guide navigation
> structure, and it provides reciprocal seealso links. More info link
> types can be provided by extensions or future Mallard versions.
>
> Informational links, however, are limited to links within the same
> document using the xref attribute (or, potentially, to other documents
> within a site or controlled document set using an extended xref syntax).
>
> This page proposes allowing informational links with an href attribute
> to point to arbitrary external pages. Obviously, external pages cannot
> be made to automatically reciprocate links, so this feature should be
> used with care. Furthermore, it may only make sense to support external
> info links for certain link types. For example, creating a series out of
> next links requires each page to specify its next page. An external page
> would necessarily be the final page in a series.
>
> == Proposal
>
> This page proposes allowing informational link elements with an href
> attribute to be processed in certain semantic link sets. The href
> attribute is already allowed by the Mallard 1.0 schema, but there is no
> specified behavior.
>
> Under this proposal, informational link elements with an href attribute
> would be included in topic, guide, and seealso link sets for the source
> page or section. They would not be used by next link sets, but they
> could be used by extensions or by link sets defined in future Mallard
> versions. Each informational link type should specify whether it can use
> external links.
>
> This page currently does not propose anything with the action attribute,
> although that linking attribute is also currently allowed by the Mallard
> 1.0 schema.
>
> Link sets using informational links rely on information found in the
> info element of the target node. Because we can't reasonably expect
> processing tools to try to find such information on external pages, this
> page proposes allowing informational elements as child elements to the
> link element to provide that information.
>
> The allowed contents of informational link element would then be
> mal_info_content. The current allowed contents is any external-namespace
> content. This is allowed in mal_info_content, so there would be no
> backwards compatibility issues for validity.
>
> The information supplied with the link element would only be used for
> external links. It would not override or supplement information for xref
> links in any way. It may, in fact, be better to split the schema
> definitions to only allow the informational child elements for external
> links.
>
> == Examples
>
> Include the Ten Minute Tour in your seealso links.
>
> [example]
> [code]
> <info>
>   <link type="seealso"
> href="http://projectmallard.org/about/learn/tenminutes">
>     <title>Ten Minute Tour</title>
>     <desc>Create a multiple-page document in only ten minutes.</desc>
>   </link>
> </info>
>
>
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