I have the HyTime standard in front of me, and on first reading it is
impressive in terms of what it tries to cover. Much of it is
impenetrable, but I hope another pass through it will clarify my
understanding a bit.
But a word of caution. In at least two different places I have read
that HyTime was designed for the INTERCHANGE of hypermedia data, and
that it is not necessarily a good choice for an efficient run-time
hypermedia format. Of course, it may well be that the overhead
associated with HyTime is small compared with the network overhead for
multimedia data transfer - but we should be aware of the problem.
Making WWW HyTime-compatible does not bring any immediate benefits.
Maybe it would make the job of client developers easier if there was a
public-domain HyTime engine available - but until there is, it is
difficult to argue for.
Despite the above, I am keen that WWW should move in this direction.
HyTime appears to provide a good deal of flexibility. You could simply
view it as a collection of useful ideas with which to design hypermedia
applications - and nothing is lost by building in HyTime compatability.
Chris Adie Phone: +44 31 650 3363
Edinburgh University Computing Service Fax: +44 31 662 4809
University Library, George Square Email: C.J.Adie@edinburgh.ac.uk
Edinburgh EH8 9LJ, United Kingdom