[whatwg] Absent rev?

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Martin McEvoy wrote:
> 
> Was this the study you based your decisions on?
> 
> http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/linkrels.html

That study was based on the first set of data I obtained, but I have since 
made many more detailed studies.


> > > (I am not criticizing just trying to understand it) surely all it 
> > > needed was to define some rev values (the same as rel) and people 
> > > will start using rev correctly?
> > 
> > That's backwards -- looking for a problem to fit the solution, not 
> > looking for a solution to fit the problem
>
> No not really because If you look at the anyalasis(link above) made in 
> 2005 rev=made (9th) is used more than, rel start, search, help, top, up, 
> author and a whole lot of other link relationships that have made their 
> way into HTML5, It doesn't make any sense?

The problem solved by rev=made (or rel=author, which is the same) is the 
problem of how to indicate the author of the page. We have solved that 
problem in HTML5 (with rel=author).

The idea of defining rev values because nobody uses rev is what I was 
referring to when I said that it was backwards.


> If you have a more up to date study on link relationships, please can I 
> have a link?

I have not published anything recently, but the results have not changed 
significantly since that 2005 study was published.


On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Martin McEvoy wrote:
>
> OK that makes sense, what cost is there of using rev and defining a few 
> rev link types?

Author confusion, implementation cost, testing cost, cost in writing 
tutorials, cost in writing validators, etc.


> This is the bit that I find so very wrong the most popular rev value is 
> rev-made which is used correctly most of the time, Authors Misuse <br> 
> all the time, the same goes for <address> based on the statement above 
> HTML5 should drop those too?

We are considering dropping <address>, though on balance it is used 
correctly quite a lot too, so it's not clear whether removing it would be 
better or worse overall. <br> we probably can't drop since it is used so 
widely and does have some pretty important valid uses.

-- 
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