Foreign object inclusion WAS: Namespaces, Architectural Forms, and Sub-Documents

[Gavin McKenzie]

David Megginson wrote:
> Gavin McKenzie wrote:
> > 
> > I thought this would be a given.  Sure using XLL or simple url
> > hrefs are great, but many times the requirement is for a single
> > file with all resources literally included.
> 
> I don't see that there is any long-term advantage to that -- in the
> short-term, it will work around some temporary short-comings in specs
> and implementations...[snip]...
> 
> In other words, inlining uuencoded objects is a kludge:
> ...[snip]...
> ...recognise that you are creating maintenance headaches for yourself
> later on (as I have for myself by forcing AElfred into a single Java
> class file), and **PLEASE** do not codify kludges in standards.

This is *NOT* a kludge.  Take archiving applications for instance.
Ideally you want a single file that literally includes all of the
resources that were part of the original document.  No external
linkages.

If you go the MHTML route, which is really just extended MIME, it does a
pretty good theoretical job of this.  The resources are all contained in
one file, and the interlinks between the resources are fixed up so that
they can refer to each other.  Any interlinks that aren't resolved
inside the file can redirect out to the net.  In fact these interlinks
can't really be resolved by the MIME processor, because it is possible
that a linkage may occur inside a script embedded in a resource that the
MIME processor knows nothing about.

If everything were in-situ XML, then it is already one file, easier to
archive, and I can come up with conventions for interlinks easily.

So....methinks this is not a kludge, rather a necessary, legitimate, and
sometimes desirable thing to do.

Gavin.

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