Re: Suggestion: ALTHREF attribute

At 4:19 AM -0500 1/15/98, Jukka Korpela wrote:
>(I know that this topic is a part of a much wider problem
>of addressing on the Web. But I think some interim solution would be
>greatly needed.)
>
>Problem description:
>There is currently no way to provide an alternative resource
>to be used when the resource specified in the HREF attribute
>of an A element is inaccessible (temporarily, e.g. due to
>server being offline, or permanently, e.g. due to resource
>having been deleted).
>
>Notice that in this discussion, "alternative resource" essentially
>means 'alternative _copy_ of a document'. Existence of such
>alternatives might be based on simple copying "by hand" or on
>automatic mirroring.
>
>Importance of the problem:
>Great, since resources are so often moved or deleted and since
>a connection can be down or much too slow at times. Even if a document
>or collection of document is made available on several servers using
>various techniques in order to make it efficiently accessible worldwide,
>in _HTML_ one currently needs to link to it using _one_ address.
>This makes links very vulnerable.

For the sake of simplicity and widest accessibility, I suggest listing all
of the possible document links in the text, instead. In addition, there's
something offering a solution of sorts at http://www.purl.org, I *think*.

Received on Thursday, 15 January 1998 06:27:26 UTC