Re: Feedback for draft-nottingham-http-link-header-03

On 04/12/2008, at 1:56 PM, Drummond Reed wrote:

> [disclaimer: I’m new to the rel/rev discussion so ignore all this if  
> I’m treading on well-worn territory.]
>
> I agree that if both “rel” and “rev” are included for outbound and  
> inbound links, respectively, their semantics must be uniform for all  
> applications.

Ideally, agreed. However, the problem is that defining the difference  
between inbound and outbound is difficult to do with great precision,  
unless you do it in the confines of a full framework for semantics on  
the Web. That seems like overkill to the greatest degree for this,  
which is why I suggested keeping it a *bit* fuzzy.

The important thing to decide here is what needs to go in *this* spec,  
realising that other specs can add things to it.


>  I also agree that the semantics of being able to assert both  
> outbound and inbound links are very useful (with my OASIS XDI TC co- 
> chair hat on I’d be shot if I said anything else – XDI RDF lives and  
> breaths by such statements).
>
> But I honestly don’t know how useful it is specifically for HTTP  
> Link headers. I don’t have enough experience there.
>
> What I can offer is this perspective on the two solutions I see  
> being discussed in the thread below (Solution #1 being to keep both  
> “rel” and “rev” and clearly define the semantics of each to be the  
> directionality of the relation, and Solution #2 being what Eran  
> suggests to keep only “rel” and put the semantics defining  
> directionlity _in the relation URI_.)

That's a non-starter; already-defined relations don't do this, current  
practice doesn't do this, and although rev isn't widely used, it is  
used in some places.


> So in the HTTP/HTML Web world where the vast majority of URIs today  
> are opaque, keeping “rel” and “rev” seems a little cleaner if you  
> want to keep the ability to express both outbound and inbound links.

Agreed.


--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/