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

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>wrote:

> Sam Johnston wrote:
>
>> I would try to keep them separate as much as possible - the Link: header
>> will be long-lived compared to the bootstrapped registry and people should
>> know well to refer to the "real" registry (and have the benefit of seeing
>> how to reference it). Is it possible to mark the section to be removed on
>> publication? If the pertinent information will be captured by IANA anyway
>> then that would seem to be the preferred option - otherwise it's just cruft.
>>
>
> That's not going to work, as the registry entries are supposed to reference
> specifications, in this case (for the old entries), the Web Linking spec.
>
> It may make sense to keep the Link registry procedure and the Link header
> in a common document, and just move the re-registration of old entries into
> a separate document, though.
>

That sounds reasonable - my main concern is that people don't see the
registrations as mini-registries. Another way to resolve this could be to
confine them to an "IANA Considerations" section such that there is no doubt
whatsoever about their purpose (in that case both the registry entry and the
definition would be colocated, which may well not work for other
specifications).

On further consideration it seems useful to have:

   - IANA Registry as a normative reference to official standards
   - WHATWG Registry [or similar] as an informative reference to both
   official and experimental standards (thus providing a mechanism for users
   and editors to locate works in progress and avoid duplication/conflict).


>
>>    I think that at the very least, it needs to be specified that the
>>    anchor attribute is not used by default; i.e., specific applications
>>    of linking need to specify that the anchor attribute is to be used.
>>
>>    I'm also amenable to deprecating or removing it, but would like to
>>    hear from others about this.
>>
>>
>> Unless I've missed something, most applications that need to refer to
>> specific parts of a document could still do so by embedding the anchor in
>> the href.
>> ...
>>
>
> The anchor refers to the source, not the destination.
>

Ok so in that case I take no position as I have no applications in mind for
such an attribute.

Sam