link header rev parameters, was: Last Call: draft-nottingham-http-link-header (Web Linking) to Proposed Standard

Mark Nottingham wrote:
> ...
>> The Link: header has a "rev" attribute. I would recommend dropping it for
>> consistency with HTML5; we discovered in examining typical usage that
>> people generally didn't understand how to use rev="", and it is redundant
>> with rel="" anyway. If it is kept, then please define how it works.
>> Allowing something but leaving it undefined is the worst of both worlds.
>> (The ideal would be to define how it works but not allow it, IMHO.)
> 
> It was included because it's in the syntax of RFC2068, but I agree that 
> it's not desirable to perpetuate it. How do people feel about further 
> removing it (i.e., it will be an extension, not called out explicitly in 
> the syntax)?
> ...

I think that not mentioning it will cause both confusion ("where did it 
go and why?") and extra work (it being re-defined for certain relations).

Thus it seems to me that the spec should document it in any case. If 
there's a consensus that it's a bad thing to use, we should add that to 
the documentation, essentially deprecating it.

BR, Julian

Received on Thursday, 20 August 2009 12:59:18 UTC