Linking and Open Vocabularies

Creating a Linking Vocabulary That Doesn't Conflict

'A' doesn't live here anymore The A, LINK, and IMG elements are just names to XML, which doesn't automatically associate any kind of behavior with element or attributes. Creating a new vocabulary requires building a meta-vocabulary developers can integrate with their own applications.
Namespaces Developers who just want links but don't need to customize them may be able to use the (controversial) XML namespaces to accomodate linking information without having to create their own linking vocabulary. XLink creates a set of global attributes for use across documents.
Integrated Linking On the other hand, developers who want to build generic linking may want to combine linking functionality with their own vocabularies. Earlier drafts allowed developers to map XLink attribute names to any attribute names; the current draft requires developers to use the XLink names, though these operate in their own namespace to minimize disturbance. It appears that the earlier requirement of integration has been dropped.
Building on Schemas and DTDs XLink functionality can be added to your application with help from the defaulting features found in XML 1.0 DTDs and the upcoming schemas. There are some risks, however.