An XML markup language that allows XML resources to contain links themselves. HTML-style hyperlinks can be created, but the language also has strong features to make it easier to manage links over time.
Theo Verelst Says who?
Basically XLink defines a common notation for links to other resources. This is needed in XML as there is no implicit link definition as it exists for HTML with <a href="yoururl"> and other tags.
Both the XLink and the XPointer specifications are W3C Recommendations (http://www.w3.org/XML/Linking ) which makes them loosely considered a standard.
See http://sun.systemnews.com/62/1/opt-dev/index.shtml#9371 for more information.
See also XPointer.