 | Level: Intermediate Contributors: W3C 06 Feb 2007
Updated 25 Apr 2007 XPointer, a language for referring to locations of
fragments of an XML document, brings similar (but more expansive)
capabilities to using URLs with hashes in order to link to a particular
point in an HTML document. Learn more about this language, including the
controversy it has stirred up and the alternative schemes it has spawned.
The
XPointer
Framework
[W3C Recommendation] defines a language that you can
use to refer to fragments of an XML document. You're perhaps already
familiar with how you can use URLs with hashes ("#") in them to link to
a particular section of an HTML document. XPointer brings similar but
much broader capabilities when linking or referring to XML documents.
You can use the framework with the
xpointer() scheme
[in development],
element() scheme
[W3C
Recommendation], and
xmlns() scheme
[W3C Recommendation], which define
specific instructions for expressing the document fragments of interest
within the XPointer Framework.
XPointer has had a rather chaotic road, and there has been a lot
of dissenting activity. Members of the XPointer working group themselves
developed a counter-proposal,
Fragment
Identifier for XML (FIXptr)
[community standard]. Several
alternative XPointer schemes include the xpath1() scheme [IETF Internet Draft].
Resources
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