[whatwg] WA1: rev attribute

Matthew Raymond wrote:
> 
>>Most common link types
>>out there are used with 'rel', but some 'rev' values can also be
>>useful. Here are some use cases:
>>   - rev="footnote" for a link back from the footnote or endnote to
>>     the source anchor in the main text
>>   - rev="help" for a link to the part of the site that the help
>>     text is about
> 
>    This is largely useless, as you are unlikely to start at a
> help/footnote document and go to the document for which the help
> document was written. The most common situation is that you clicked the
> help/footnote like from the parent document, and therefore the
> relationship is already established from the parent document.

Or maybe I just scrolled to the bottom after reading the whole text
straight through and want to jump to the context of the footnote
I'm now reading. (The footnote and its context could be in the same
document, too, y'know.)

>>   - rev="author" on a personal site or resume for links to documents
>>     s/he has written
> 
>    Here, you're using |rev| to replace missing metadata in the target
> document. What happens when <meta name="Author"> is defined in the
> target documents? Does |rev| override? What would a UA do with the
> information anyway? If there's a link, wouldn't there be text stating
> that the creator of the personal site created the document the link is to?

I think you're missing the point here. 'rev' doesn't say anything more
about the linked document than 'rel' does. It's just a way of expressing
inverse relationships without having to pull out thesauri and latin
prefixes and excessive hyphens.

>    At least with |rel|, you could harvest hyperlinks and put them into a
> link toolbar. With |rev|, you're describing the relationship type of the
> current document. Therefore, I really don't see what user agents are
> supposed to do with |rev| and how they can create a useful interface
> that can exploit this attribute.

The user agent doesn't need to do anything to make the markup useful:
if you look at XFN, for example, UAs didn't support any of it, but
authors still used the markup as hooks to for styling.

> Counterexample:
> | <meta name="refuting" content="
> |  Intelligent Design;
> |  http://hemadeyou.org
> | ">

I don't think I need to say anything about how ridiculous a counter-
suggestion that is.

~fantasai

Received on Monday, 18 July 2005 22:58:48 UTC