[whatwg] [WA1] The profile Attribute

Fri Sep 16 03:05:04 PDT 2005

Matthew Raymond wrote:

>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>
>  
>
Basically, yes.

-- 
"It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise."

-- http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html