XLink defines a set of attributes that may be added to characters of other XML namespaces. XLink provides two kinds of hyperlinking for use in XML documents. Extended links are out–of–band hyperlinks that, in a linkbase document, can link resources over which the link editor has no control. Simple links essay similar functionality to HTML links, which are in–band links.

A simple copula is correlative to those native to HTML; it easily creates a unidirectional hyperlink arc from peculiar element to another http://www.xlinkgateway.com/ via a URI. Example: