Re: new attributes for fine-tuning the handling of linked and embedded resources

On 5/28/08, Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com> wrote:
>
>  Dear WG,
>
>  Here is another issue that needs to be introduced here for discussion, as
> it will be added to the issue-tracker in time. It has been discussed on the
> list in relation to content type issues and http headers. It has not been
> addressed in the draft.
>
>  New attributes for handling and downloading linked and embedded
> resources.[1]
>
>  [1]:
> <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/LinkAndEmbeddingAttributes>

I like the general idea of this at least.

For @download, 'default' and 'download-dialog' seem fine.

For example, a site might serve file.cpp as text/plain, but I want to
provide a left-click download link and would use <a
href="http://somesite.com/file.cpp" download="download-dialog">

But, 'download' does not. 'download' is dangerous in my opinion. For
an example of why, see <http://reddit.com/info/6jheq/comments/> (think
windows users).

For @processas, that could be convenient.

For example, if some site serves file.pls as text/plain, I might use
<a href="http://somesite.com/file.pls" processas="_audio/x-scpls"> so
that it opens in foobar instead of being displayed as a text file.

As another example, there might be a text/html page that you want to
load as text/plain. <a href="http://somesite.com/file.html"
processass="_text/plain">

Browsers sometimes have problems with figuring out the type and
filename (especially through redirections). Sometimes it's a bug in
the browser or a difference between browsers or a misconfigured
server. I often use wget or curl instead to "just download the damn
thing !". These feature could help an author solve some of this.

I guess most would want these problems solved outside HTML though.