WD-xptr-19980303


XML Pointer Language (XPointer)

World Wide Web Consortium Working Draft 03-March-1998

This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-xptr-19980303
Previous version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xml-link-970731
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xptr
Editors:
Eve Maler (ArborText) <elm@arbortext.com>
Steve DeRose (Inso Corp. and Brown University ) <sderose@eps.inso.com>

Status of this document

This is a W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". A list of current W3C working drafts can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.

This work is part of the W3C XML Activity (for current status, see http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/XML/Activity ). For information about the XLink language in which XPointer is expected to be used, see http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xlink .

See http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-xlink-principles for additional background on the design principles informing XPointer.

Abstract

This document specifies constructs that support addressing into the internal structures of XML documents. In particular, it provides for specific reference to elements, character strings, and other parts of XML documents, whether or not they bear an explicit ID attribute.

XML Pointer Language (XPointer)

Version 1.0

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
    1.1 Language Design Goals
    1.2 Relationship to Existing Standards
    1.3 Terminology
    1.4 Notation
2. XPointers in Locators
3. The XPointer Language
    3.1 XPointer Structure
    3.2 Absolute Location Terms
        3.2.1 The root Keyword
        3.2.2 The origin Keyword
        3.2.3 The id Keyword
        3.2.4 The html Keyword
    3.3 Relative Location Terms
        3.3.1 Relative Location Term Arguments
        3.3.2 Selection by Instance Number
        3.3.3 Selection by Node Type
        3.3.4 Selection by Attribute
        3.3.5 The descendant Keyword
        3.3.6 The ancestor Keyword
        3.3.7 The preceding Keyword
        3.3.8 The following Keyword
        3.3.9 The psibling Keyword
        3.3.10 The fsibling Keyword
    3.4 Spanning Location Term
    3.5 Attribute Location Term
    3.6 String Location Term
    3.7 Locations That Are Not Simply Nodes
        3.7.1 Spanning Strings
        3.7.2 The all Keyword
        3.7.3 Spanning XPointers
    3.8 Link Persistence
4. Conformance

Appendices

A. Unfinished Work
    A.1 Case Sensitivity in Attribute Values
    A.2 XPointers and Abstract Data Types
B. XPointers and TEI Extended Pointers
C. References

1. Introduction

This document specifies a language that supports addressing into the internal structures of XML documents. In particular, it provides for specific reference to elements, character strings, and other parts of XML documents, whether or not they bear an explicit ID attribute.