Re: [Moderator Action] dir attribute in LINK

Hello Nir,

Thanks for digging this up. I will forward it to the
HTML WG.

At 05:20 99/08/05 -0400, Nir Dagan wrote:
> 
> The HTML4.0 spec. [1] suggests that the dir attribute in LINK 
> refers to the directionality of the linked resource.
> This is very different from the lang attribute that refers to the
> language of the title attribute (and hreflang refers to that
> of the linked resource)
> 
> It seems to me that 
> 
> 1. It would make more sense that dir would refer to the title 
> attribute's directionality.

Yes indeed, like DIR everywhere else.

> 2. In order to refer to directionality of linked resources 
>  we need a new attribute, e.g., hrefdir

i don't think this is needed. 'hreflang' and 'charset' are
very helpful because they help selecting the right link and
can provide information that may not be in the target document.
But my guess is that 'dir' is always used in the target document
(otherwise, it won't be readable), and therefore, it's not needed
on link.

Regards,  Martin.

> 3. It is not clear from the description[2] of dir whether it
> actually affects attribute values (such as title, alt in IMG
> etc.) I think it should.
> 
> [1]
> In  
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#edef-LINK
> we find:
> 
> "...Note the use of the dir and charset attributes for the Arabic
> manual
> ...
> <LINK title="The manual in Arabic"
>       dir="rtl"
>       type="text/html"
>       rel="alternate"
>       charset="ISO-8859-6"
>       hreflang="ar" 
>       href="http://someplace.com/manual/arabic.html">
> ..."
> 
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/dirlang.html#h-8.2
> 
> Nir Dagan
> 
> http://www.nirdagan.com
> mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
> tel:+972-2-588-3143
> 
> 
> 


#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, World Wide Web Consortium
#-#-#  mailto:duerst@w3.org   http://www.w3.org

Received on Thursday, 5 August 1999 22:37:47 UTC