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

[Mikko Rantalainen]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Mark Baker wrote:
> 
>> 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-)
> 
> Fair enough. I'm not sure what a good solution would be then. Specifying 
> rel="alternate" without specifying the type="" when you're using Atom as a 
> non-feed format seems like the only workable one.

How about introducing a new rel keyword: nonfeed? Then one could say 
rel="alternate nonfeed" and it would be clear that referenced URL 
contains an alternative representation that is not a feed.

It seems that if 'rel' doesn't specify "feed" then the referenced 
URL may or may not contain a feed for the page. If 'rel' specifies 
the "feed" then it's a feed. It would be logical to introduce 
another keyword to make it possible to specify that referenced URL 
is not a feed.

Perhaps the spec should also say that in the future not specifying 
"feed" should be interpreted as "nonfeed". But as it stands now that 
cannot be deduced from the fact that keyword "feed" is not used.

-- 
Mikko