[whatwg] Inferring rel="feed" from the media type

[Lachlan Hunt]

Mark Baker wrote:
> "If the alternate keyword is used with the type attribute set to the
> value application/rss+xml or the value application/atom+xml, then the
> user agent must treat the link as it would if it had the feed keyword
> specified as well."
>  -- http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#link-type
> 
> I believe this in error.  Atom, at least (I expect this also holds for
> RSS), is useful for representing more things than just feeds...
> 
> In addition, the media type on link is non-authoritative, meaning that
> feed-semantics would be inferred before it was even ascertained that
> the would-be representation was actually an Atom or RSS document.

But it's based on how autodiscovery already works in UAs at the moment. 
  The following is already recognised as a feed:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href="/feed">

We can't redefine it in an incompatible way without breaking a lot of 
pages that already use that for autodiscovery.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/