Re: [XHTML 2] 22.1 Activation of links and retrieval of link targets (PR#7769)

> Please clarify what a user agent should do in response to mark-up such as
> 
>         <link rel="dc:source" href="urn:isbn:0140449132">
> 
> 22.1 says
> 
> "User agents should enable activation of links and the retrieval of link 
> targets. Since link elements may have no content, information from the rel 
> and title attributes should be used when labelling links."
> 
> but what does activation mean in the context of an urn: href?
> 
> Please change the specification to remove this ambiguity.  Preferably remove 
> the use of urn: and other href's that are not designed to be de-refrenced 
> from the href of a link.  So an author can easily specify if a resource can 
> be usefully derefrenced, and a user agent can know if it's useful to provide 
> users with the ability to activate the link.

There is nothing inherent in a urn that means it cannot be activated (or
dereferenced), anymore than there is something inherent in an http: uri that
means it *can* be activated.

As a consequence, we have decided to leave the definition of what it means to
dereference a URI to the relevant specifications.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton
For the HTML Working group