RE: Navigation Tag

>Actually, not for most. Relations like "next" and "previous" probably
>need unique targets, but relations like 'REV="glossary"' (which would
>probably mean that the head of the link is a glossary for the
>tail). Most of the relationships are one-to-many when in reverse. (on
>the other hand, specifiying which documents a document is a glossary
>OF is more trouble than it's worth).

Agreed; this kind of UA rendering only applies to those links useful for 
navigation, which itself means only one target for each link, or in this 
case linktype.

>>  Authors should specify related documents as link elements if they
>> should be rendered by the UA, and in meta elements if they should
>> not.

>How do you specify a related document using META? And what about
>REL="stylesheet" (which should is processed by the UA, but not offered
>as a link).

Many meta names map to HTML linktypes.  As for stylsheets, there is quite a 
bit of processing (including user interaction) the UA is supposed to do to 
with these, particularly to allow user selection (by clicking a button or 
selecting from a menu) of alternate stylesheets for accessibility and 
language.

http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/PR-html40-19990824/struct/global.html#edef-META 
states
Note. When a property specified by a META <global.html> element takes a 
value that is a URI <../types.html>, some authors prefer to specify the 
meta data via the LINK <links.html> element. Thus, the following meta data 
declaration:
<META name="DC.identifier"
      content="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1866.txt">
might also be written:
<LINK rel="DC.identifier"
         type="text/plain"
         href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1866.txt">

I had originally written a paragraph asking for some relief for coding the 
same information (next, prev, etc.) repeatedly in each document when I took 
a look at the spec and saw the note above, relieving me of some of this 
redundancy.  It implies UAs (and perhaps search engines) will scan both 
LINK and META elements in the head for metadata.  Both Jukka's suggestion 
and mine would require extending that scan to the document body as well.

On a similar note, I don't understand the reason for having META, STYLE, 
and SCRIPT elements at all when these could all be done with LINK elements, 
if LINK is allowed to have content.  (If the author doesn't specify or the 
UA can't find the LINK href, the UA uses the content of the link in the 
manner specified by the link rel and type.)  (Come to think of it, A, IMG, 
OBJECT and IFRAME could then all be represented with this very generic LINK 
element, as well, if you slide down this slope too far. ;)

-David

Received on Thursday, 9 December 1999 10:24:13 UTC