XPointer is a system for addressing components of

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

-based

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

media. It is divided among four specifications: a " framework" that forms the basis for identifying XML fragments, a positional element addressing scheme, a scheme for

namespaces In computing, a namespace is a set of signs (''names'') that are used to identify and refer to objects of various kinds. A namespace ensures that all of a given set of objects have unique names so that they can be easily identified. Namespaces ...

, and a scheme for

XPath XPath (XML Path Language) is an expression language designed to support the query or transformation of XML documents. It was defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1999, and can be used to compute values (e.g., strings, numbers, or ...

-based addressing. XPointer Framework is a

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

recommendation since March 2003. The XPointer language is designed to address structural aspects of XML, including text content and other information objects created as a result of

parsing Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is a process of analyzing a String (computer science), string of Symbol (formal), symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal gramm ...

the document. Thus, it could be used to point to a section of a document highlighted by a user through a mouse drag action. During development, and until 2016, XPointer was covered by a royalty-free technology

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

held by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

Positional element addressing

The element() scheme introduces positional addressing of child elements. This is similar to a simple XPath address, but subsequent steps can only be numbers representing the position of a descendant relative to its branch on the tree. For instance, given the following fragment: results as the following examples: xpointer(id("foo")) => foobar xpointer(/foobar/1) => bar xpointer(//bom) => bom (a=1), bom (a=2) element(/1/2/1) => bom (a=1) (/1 descend into first element (foobar), /2 descend into second child element (baz), /1 select first child element (bom))

References

External links

XPointer Framework

Namespacing

Path based addressing

Open source implementation (CognitiveWeb)

GPL License .NET implementation (XInclude.NET)
*
Method and system for implementing hypertext scroll attributes
' on Google Patents, expired 2016-02-01 {{DEFAULTSORT:Xpointer World Wide Web Consortium standards XML data access

Positional element addressing

See also

References

External links