- From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com>
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:20:13 -0800
- To: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Cc: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>, Toby Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk>, Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com>, "public-html@w3.org" <public-html@w3.org>
On Dec 29, 2009, at 3:35 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote: > Hi Mark, > > When you, Roy or anyone else makes bold claims about "confusion" about > what HTML 4 says, then it would be extremely helpful if you could > provide an exegesis that that demonstrate those claims. > > I followed your pointer to Roy's message - and what did I see? I saw > hat Roy has not read HTML 4 correctly. HTML 4 says _exactly_ what Roy > says, namely: Links are not reversible. But relationships are. (That > relationships are reversible doesn't mean that the _words_ for those > relationships are reversible - @rev doesn't create antonyms ... of > course.) I doubt that your reinterpretation and rephrasing of what HTML4 says is going to enlighten my interpretation of what the spec actually has written. I know what rel and rev does in reality, and that agrees with your [2]. What I disagreed with is the specific words used to define that reality in HTML4, which has been misinterpreted by *other* spec writers to mean that the link is reversed (not the semantics), and hence the discussion about it in the Link draft. > I have provided an exegesis of what HTML 4 says which demonstrates that > this is so [1][2]. I produced it without knowing about Roy's message - > I came to this conclusion _solely_ by reading HTML 4. > > It is indeed true, also, that HTML 4 could have used a clearer wording. > But if one reads HTML 4 the same way that HTML 5 says one should read > HTML 5 [3], then it ought to be pretty obvious that there is no other > possible interpretation of HTML 4 than the one Roy have. In other > words: HTML 4 is says the same that previous specifications has said. > > If you or anyone have another interpretation of HTML 4, then please > provide something that makes your interpretation credible. Or else we > should put those claims aside as unfounded. Why is that even remotely relevant? The claims exist whether or not they can be demonstrated false. Moreover, you just replied to someone who claimed the exact opposite of your interpretation of the very same words, so clearly someone is confused. HTML5 says under hyperlink For <a> and <area> elements that represent hyperlinks, the relationship between the document containing the hyperlink and the destination resource indicated by the hyperlink is given by the value of the element's rel attribute, which must be a set of space-separated tokens. The allowed values and their meanings are defined below. The rel attribute has no default value. If the attribute is omitted or if none of the values in the attribute are recognized by the user agent, then the document has no particular relationship with the destination resource other than there being a hyperlink between the two. and something different under link. Neither can be interpreted with any sense of conviction because "resource" is used in several contradictory ways in the spec, as is "default" and "context" (presumably in this case because Ian decided to remove the notion of an anchor as a conceptual framework for describing links). In any case, rev is gone from HTML5, and therefore the description of its semantics is no longer in the draft. I think the issue in the subject is solely about who owns the relation registry. Since the relations must be independent of media type, I think it is obvious that HTML cannot own the registry. YMMV. > [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Dec/0409 > [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Dec/0410 > [3] > http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#how-to-read-this-specification BTW, [3] is lame, even if read as a sarcastic joke. ....Roy
Received on Wednesday, 30 December 2009 03:20:44 UTC