[whatwg] PaceEntryMediatype

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:01:14 +0600, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

>> Why is it useful for a browser to make a list of a bunch of random feeds
>> that have no relation to one another or to the current page?

> Well they sort of have a relation -- they're feeds that the author thinks
> the user would find useful.

This is no more tight a relation than "a page that the author thinks the
user would find useful", which is usually expressed with <a> rather than
<link>.

> This is something that happens already in the real world -- I'm just  
> trying
> to make the spec distinguish "alternate" from "feed" when it comes to  
> such feeds.

Whoever is doing it abuses <link>.

rel="feed" means "the feed for the current document", rel="alternate"
means "an alternate representation of the current document". Therefore,
rel="alternate feed" means "alternate representation of the current
document by a feed".

>> Currently the orange RSS icon means "Subscribe to this page". This is a
>> lot more useful (in my opinion) than it meaning "subscribe to some
>> random thing".

> No, it doesn't. It means "subscribe to something the author made
> available". Currently you have no way to know if it is the current page's
> feed or just a list of random related feeds.

Surely the author could have referenced any irrelevant feed but that's not
a good thing to do. Conscious authors should only use rel="feed" as
defined in the spec.


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <alexey at feldgendler.ru>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com