Re: Use of rel attribute on your spec pages

On 3 May 2010, at 8:42 PM, Joseph Becher wrote:

> On http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.3 it states  
> that the rev attribute should be used for reverse links, but on that  
> page and others I observed that you use the rel attribute for the  
> 'Previous' link. Is there a reason for this?


Hi Joseph,

I think this is the explanation:

Chapter 2 has a "previous" chapter (Chapter 1). Thus, from the  
perspective of Chapter 2, I want to specify the "previous"
relationship (rel) to Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 I write:

    <link href="Chapter1" rel="prev"/>

Suppose I also wanted to say within Chapter 1 that Chapter 1 is the  
previous chapter of Chapter 2. I could write this  in Chapter 1:

      <link href="Chapter2" rev="prev"/>

I used the "prev" relationship, but you could do this with another  
link type [1]. For instance, from the cover page:

     <link href="copyright.html" rel="copyright"/>

and from copyright.html, to say "I am the copyright statement of the  
cover page," you could say:

     <link href="cover.html" rev="copyright"/>

That, at least, is my understanding: rel and rev allow you to describe  
a relationship and its inverse. A search around the Web suggests that  
rev is not used much. I believe HTML5 deprecates it [2].

  _ Ian

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-links
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html

--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)    http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel:                                      +1 718 260 9447

Received on Wednesday, 5 May 2010 03:37:41 UTC