- From: Frank Boumphrey <bckman@ix.netcom.com>
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 23:51:13 -0400
- To: <drbojxn@netdoor.com>
- Cc: <www-html@w3.org>
Bo, >Link source/destination confusion Ka-Ping Yee > I was unable to find the letter you refered to in the archives the <LINK> element is potentially extreamly useful especially as a source of Linking meta-data. The problem is that it is not used, so it is ignored by application developers. However there is no reason why an author designing an Intra net could not use it. >Not only is there confusion regarding definitions of REL and REV, as >pointed out by Mr. Yee; but, also, confusion regarding values these >attributes can take Here is a list of values that REL and REV can take (This is of the top of my head I may have missed out one or two). remember all the REL is doing is indicating the kind of RELationship that the document containg the LINK tag has to this one, so that REL=COPYRIGHT would indicating that the link is pointing at a document containing copyright material. if the same link contained REV=START, it would indicate that as far as the COPYRIGHT document was concerned, this was the first in a series of documents. ALTERNATE STYLESHEET SCRIPT CONTENTS OR TOC INDEX GLOSSARY COPYRIGHT START NEXT PREVIOUS HELP CHAPTER SECTION SUBSECTION APPENDIX BOOKMARK Under B4, the paragraph, "Indicate the Beginning of a Collection", >states use rel="start" but the example that follows has rel="begin". BEGIN and START mean the same thing do they not? Both REL=START and REL=BEGIN merely indicates that the document the link is pointing to can be considered the start in a series of documents. >I have seen various statements to the effect the user agents "don't >do anything intelligent" with <LINK> information anyway. Could all >this confusion have some bearing on this? User Agents use the LINK to connect to style sheets. What can be more useful than that. The main use of LINKS as I see it is for "bots" that stumble across your page can orientate themselves if this is one in a long series of documents. I think that it was designed to give Meta-data about the page. See the comment about the link element given below. You are right though in implying that an element is only useful if used. We have a chicken and egg situation. Bots will not be programmed to look for link information if most pages don't use it, and most Authors will not put in a descriptive LINK element if they can't see the use for one. Other useage will be with the DOM, when you can access the content of the element. Intranet designers could make full use of this element to keep track of a large site. . Maybe it >would be used more if the average HTML author could be given a simple >explanation of its use and a simple set of rules to follow. OK On every page you make put the following <LINK REL=START HREF=[homepage url]> I don't do this but perhaps I should! (the following is pasted from the strict4.dtd) <!--================== The LINK Element ==================================--> <!-- Relationship values can be used in principle: a) for document specific toolbars/menus when used with the LINK element in document head e.g. start, contents, previous, next, index, end, help b) to link to a separate style sheet (rel=stylesheet) c) to make a link to a script (rel=script) d) by stylesheets to control how collections of html nodes are rendered into printed documents e) to make a link to a printable version of this document e.g. a postscript or pdf version (rel=alternate media=print) --> <!ELEMENT LINK - O EMPTY -- a media-independent link --> <!ATTLIST LINK %attrs; -- %coreattrs, %i18n, %events -- charset %Charset; #IMPLIED -- char encoding of linked resource -- href %URI; #IMPLIED -- URI for linked resource -- hreflang %LanguageCode; #IMPLIED -- language code -- type %ContentType; #IMPLIED -- advisory content type -- rel %LinkTypes; #IMPLIED -- forward link types -- rev %LinkTypes; #IMPLIED -- reverse link types -- media %MediaDesc; #IMPLIED -- for rendering on these media -- > Frank Frank Boumphrey XML and style sheet info at Http://www.hypermedic.com/style/index.htm Author: - Professional Style Sheets for HTML and XML http://www.wrox.com -----Original Message----- From: Bo Holloman <drbojxn@netdoor.com> To: <www-html@w3.org> Cc: <ping@foresight.org> Date: Friday, August 14, 1998 10:04 PM Subject: LINK Element Confusion
Received on Friday, 14 August 1998 23:50:07 UTC