At the present period (late 2002), XPointer is divided among foursome specifications: a "framework" which forms the basis for identifying XML fragments, the positional element addressing scheme, the scheme for namespaces, and the scheme for XPath-based addressing.

A XPointer language is designed to location structural aspects of XML, including text content & more principles objects created following of parsing the document. So, it can be utilized to point to the division of the document highlighted by the user across the mouse drag action.

XPointer is encumbered by the technology patent held by Sun Microsystems.

Positional Element Addressing

A element() scheme introduces positional addressing of baby elements. This is similar to the elementary XPath location, however subsequent steps may exclusively exist as totals representing the position of a descendent proportional to its branch on the tree.

For example, given a as a result fragment:

a XPointer to bom would exist as:

element(foo/2/1)

See Also
Fragment identifier XML HTML HyTime Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines