[whatwg] [WA1] The profile Attribute

Thu Sep 15 10:11:49 PDT 2005

James Graham wrote:
> Most documents on the web are a direct result of view-source style 
> learning. If they're invalid rubbish, it's (at least partly) because 
> spec writers have erronously assumed that the majority of authors would 
> have enough of a clue to check things like whether there were conflicts 
> between diffrent profiles they were using. In fact, the fact that 
> authors won't check for conflicts is one reason that namespaces *should* 
> be used for profiles - and we should encourage authors to use them as 
> much as possible so that every value assosiated with a profile is 
> assosiated explicitly. Authors simply won't read the part of the spec 
> that explains why including multiple profiles is a bad idea, will 
> include multiple profiles (since they'll see that that's allowed from 
> view-sourcing other documents) and will run into name conflicts. So, 
> infact, I'd require that all profiles introduced through a profile 
> element (or similar) have an explicity title that was then required for 
> accessing that profile throughout the document. The profile attribute on 
> <head> would be discouraged. Then authors looking at a document via 
> view-source would see a consisent and logical picture which they could 
> easilly copy.

   So what you're suggesting is something like this?...

| <link rel="profile" href="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11" title="xfn">
| [...]
| <a rel="xfn:colleague" href="http://lachy.id.au/">
|   Lachlan Hunt: Web Development Guru
| </a>