[whatwg] rel/rev for <form> ?

[Mike Dierken]

> Having rel/rev for a form element is logical. Hyperlink and 
> form are inherently related in that both are used to specify 
> protocol of communication. So, if hyperlink can have rel/rev, 
> why not form?
It could, sure. But the original request was to define the purpose of the
URI in the action attribute, not the relatioship between the action URI and
the <form> element, so rel/rev was overkill & possibly inappropriate.
The meaning of a tag matching "html/body/form[@action]" is already
documented - it defines the structure of a document acceptable by the
resource identified by the action attribute. Defining the meaning of the
document is probably more worthwhile, rather than the meaning of the
resource that would accept that document.
It would be cool to have the browser support POSTing some content type more
sophisticated than www-url-encoded, like XML (no flames please).
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/forms.html#form-content-type
I honestly have no idea if the WHAT-WG is working on that, or some other
group, or what.

> 
> As for the "tags" attribute discussion, you guys just 
> invented a "class" attribute.
Well, that also was one suggestion, but 'class' is mostly for user interface
rendering, rather than purely semantic meaning. But it may not be necessary
or workable to have a 'purely semantic' attribute. Some web crawling system
would likely be able to figure out the semantic equivalence if enough people
used a small enough set of values for similar things.