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

[Mark Baker]

Hi Ian,

On 11/29/06, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Mark Baker wrote:
> >
> > HTML 5 says;
> >
> > "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.
>
> It is intentional, as a way of grandfathering widespread legacy practice.
>
> I agree that it is suboptimal. I'm not sure how to cater to both the
> existing content and, moving forward, to allow Atom to be used with
> rel=alternate to mean "alternate representation that isn't a feed".

What about documenting that some agents make that assumption, but not
prescribing that all agents must do so?

And to answer your other question, the proposed new media type for
Atom entry documents would only solve the problem for entries.  It
wouldn't solve them for the MHTML-like Atom document I described, nor
any other non-feed use of Atom... of which there most likely will be
many in the future.  If such a solution were used as precedent for
solving the problem for those uses of Atom, it would mean a new media
type for each use; a media type per link type, in fact.  Ouch!  So no,
I'm not a fan 8-)

Mark.