Alternative Approaches - Weaknesses of XLink

Staying on the W3C's bus?

The IMG problem Even simple-seeming elements like the HTML IMG element can't be represented by XLink, as IMG contains two locators, SRC and LONGDESC. It doesn't seem unreasonable to have to locators as attributes, but XLink is too brittle to support it. (Even in earlier versions of XLink, which were more flexible, this was a problem.)
The RDF problem Reconciling XLink and RDF, both of which describe relationships among resources, is a fairly complex and controversial task, best avoided.
The Stylesheet problem Are graphic designers really the people who should be designing stylesheets for handling link processing?
Waiting for the W3C The XLink group spent 15 months between working drafts, though recent drafts have moved much more quickly.