asynchronous loading of linked content?

["Mark D. Anderson" <mda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I didn't get any takers when I asked this to xml-dev, so
I'm trying again on the xsl list.
-mda

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark D. Anderson <mda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: xml-dev@xxxxxxxx <xml-dev@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Sunday, December 20, 1998 4:38 PM
Subject: parallelism in presentation?


>Suppose I want a web page showing weather in several
>parts of the world, aggregating content from a variety of servers.
>I naturally want the loading of that constituent content to
>be driven by the browser from those servers, in parallel.
>
>Today, that can be done easily with the IMG tag.
>If I want html loaded from different places, I either
>have to use frames (gag), or some javascript hacks (gag again),
>or something unportable such as activex or java (coughing up blood).
>
>How would this work in the xml/xsl/xlp future?
>
>Presumably I would start with a smallish xml file sent to the browser,
>which has a variety of links to other xml content from other servers.
>Those links would have whatever attributes are necessary to indicate that
>the semantics are to pull in the pointed-to content as if it were inlined.
>
>Now, some of that pointed-to content will load faster than others
>in that page. Some will fail to load at all. Meanwhile, the layout
>engine is hopefully able to do something useful. In particular, the
>xsl style sheet may actually be suppressing some of the xml anyway,
>so failures to load in those subtrees shouldn't matter.
>While visible content is loading, it would of course be nice if bounding
>boxes and temporary labels/content are shown.
>
>This basically requires a layout engine that can act on the xml
>with the xsl pattern matches acting as closures when the actual "expanded" xml
>isn't available yet.
>
>Has this all been spec'd yet? Are there working examples?
>What is the right terminology? What does this mean for the DOM?
>
>It strikes me that this isn't a "nice-to-have"; this issue is going to
>have to be confronted somehow as soon as xml becomes more available on the web.
>
>-mda



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