Re: Last Call: draft-nottingham-http-link-header (Web Linking) to Proposed Standard

I'm reading draft-nottingham-http-link-header-06 and I have a few comments, or 
at least things I am confused about.


Section 4 says: "As such, relation types are not format-specific, and MUST NOT 
specify a particular format or media type that they are to be used with."

Does this refer to the format or media type of the context or the target?
I think there are reasonable use cases for a relation type to specify what the 
target format is supposed to be. For example, an application-specific 
extension relation type to link http://example.com to an API endpoint 
(whatever that means) could say the target must be (or should be) 
application/x-example-format+xml. Or a relation type could say the target 
must be a subtype of the image/ mime type.


In the ABNF in section 5, enc2231-string refers to extended-value in section 7 
of RFC2231. However, "extended-value" isn't explicitly defined anywhere in 
RFC. The strange thing is that it's *used* in other ABNF constructions of 
RFC2231, like extended-parameter; but I don't see it in the left hand side of 
any ":="


Below the ABNF in section 5, it says:
"If the URI-Reference is relative, it MUST be resolved as per [RFC3986], 
Section 5."

Does this mean that if a client parsing a Link header finds a relative URI 
reference, it MUST resolve it to an absolute URI; or does it mean a server 
MUST resolve relative URIs to absolute URIs before sending the Link header to 
a client?

I think it should be clarified what side (client or server) that MUST applies 
to.

Same for "If the anchor parameter's value is a relative URI[...]" in the 
paragraph that follows.


Editorial issue: the last line of page 5 (second paragraph after ABNF in 
section 5) should be moved to the beginning of page 6 for better readability. 
(this is known as an "orphan line")


Apologies in advance if any of these issues were raised already (I'm not on 
the mailing list myself), or if I'm posting to the wrong list for this topic.

Since I'm not subscribed to the list (and I'm having technical problems to 
access gmane.org), I'd appreciate if you Cc: me in any replies.

-- 
Nicolas

Received on Thursday, 16 July 2009 22:09:12 UTC