Re: Use of rel attribute on your spec pages

I guess it doesn't matter, as it it going away in HTML 5, but I assumed it
would used the following way:

Assuming you are on page 2;

<link href="Page1" rev="prev"/>
<link href="Page2" rel="next"/>

With rel meaning a forward link, and rev meaning a reverse link. I also
think that's what you said,  but in the specs rel is used for both prev and
next link types. So I guess I'm still confused.

- Joseph Becher




On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org> wrote:

>
> 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
>
>