W3C approves XML linking methods

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recommended two related specifications designed to link pages written in Extensible Markup Language (XML). The first, XML Linking Language, or XLink, became a candidate recommendation nearly a year ago and achieves its final recommendation status more than six months past its scheduled approval. The recommendation provides a means of linking to and from discrete parts of a single XML document that is more flexible than HTML linking methods. The second recommendation, XML Base, lets XML document authors specify a certain page or domain to which subsequent links will lead. Once that base address is specified, authors can shorten addresses to indicate only discrete parts of that page.