Guidance on using relative links in OASIS specifications

Chet,

The OASIS OSLC Specifications
contain numerous URL references across the multi-part specifications. For
example, the OSLC Core Specification has links to its vocabulary document.
Many of these links include fragment identifiers to link to specific document
sections.

 <p class='conformance'>OSLC
Servers MUST implement the OSLC Core vocabulary as defined in <a href="">http://docs.oasis-open.org/oslc-core/oslc-core/v3.0/csprd03/part7-core-vocabulary/oslc-core-v3.0-csprd03-part7-core-vocabulary.html">OSLC
Core Version 3.0. Part 7: Vocabulary</a>.</p>

The issue is what to use for
stable URIs for these references. We cannot use the file names in the git
repository because these do not correspond to the published files. As can
be seen from the example above, the actual OASIS published file names correspond
to OASIS file naming guidelines, and include document status and revision
numbers in the file and path names. So these file names do not provide
stable URIs. Each document does have a stable URI that references the latest
published version. For example, http://docs.oasis-open.org/oslc-core/oslc-core/v3.0/oslc-core-v3.0-part7-core-vocabulary.htmlis the URI for the latest version of the OSLC Core Vocabulary specification.
If we use these to construct the relative URIs, then we have two problems.
First, when developing the specifications, the relative links would not
work between resources in the git repository. Second, when browsing a particular
revision of an OSLC specification, a reader clicking on one of these links
may be viewing a different version of the related specification, the latest
version.

We could avoid direct href references
in the HTML and always link indirectly through a bibliography entry. However,
this would provide a poor user experience when viewing the HTML documents,
and doesnât support fragment identifiers. 

What is the OASIS recommended
approach for dealing with relative links between documents?

Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
OSLC and Linked Lifecycle Data
919-525-6575