[whatwg] Re: Autodiscovery

[fantasai]

Henri Sivonen wrote:
> 
> On May 4, 2005, at 09:16, Mark Pilgrim wrote:
> 
>> Then I'm confused as to why you can't just release running code that
>> hard-codes rel="alternate".  You know, like people have already done.
> 
> Sure you can. ("Can" in the sense that it is possible.)
> 
> However, when other things are equal, I think misusing an existing 
> relation (feed usually is not a proper alternate representation) is 
> worse than specifying a new one without all the profile fluff.
> 
> Still, I am well aware that the other things are not equal in this case 
> (ie. there is deployed code), which is why I was not arguing in favor of 
> rel='feed' per se, but pointing out that the particular reasoning 
> against it did not hold water, IMO.

It is the case that many, if not most, autodiscovery links *are* linking
to valid alternates of the current page. Taking into account the wide
use of the rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" combination, the
spec could be written to

   - specify that any link with rel="feed" and type="application/atom+xml"
     indicates an autodiscoverable Atom feed
   - specify that UAs MAY also recognize the rel="alternate" and
     type="application/atom+xml" combination as an autodiscoverable Atom
     feed even if 'feed' is not among the rel values,
   - but specify that authors SHOULD NOT  (or MUST NOT) leave out the
     'feed' value
   - recommend that links that do indicate a feed version of the current
     HTML page SHOULD link to that feed with both link types

Blogging software is a fast-moving industry. If the draft editor makes
this change and notifies the community, I suspect it will not be long
before most software supports both syntaxes.

~fantasai