[whatwg] Absent rev?

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Martin McEvoy wrote:
> >
> > Despite your claims to the contrary, given the way that the "rel" 
> > attribute and the related keywords are defined, rel=author does in 
> > fact convey the semantics that rev=made did.
>
> No It doesn't Reverse and Inverse properties are key factors of any 
> Semantics without both @rev and @rel there is hardly any semantics at 
> all just a one way stream of information, which most of the time you 
> have to guess what the Authors intentions were.
>
> rel=author on the whole only relates to published documents, rel=made 
> relates to Documents, Music, Photos, Videos, Sunday Lunch! Literaly 
> anything that can be *made*

They are in fact _defined_ to be equivalent in HTML5:

   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#link-type-author

I don't understand what benefit there would be to saying that HTML pages 
about photos couldn't use rel=author. That seems weird.



> > either direction to be defined, there is no need anymore for a 
> > separate rev="" attribute.
>
> So essentially @rel in html5 is breaking the semantics of @rel just 
> because it cant deal with @rev?

Could you provide an example of how rel's semantics are broken?


> > > the misuse of "stylesheet" is trivial and only a matter of informing 
> > > authors of their error
> > 
> > Well, who's going to be doing the informing?
> 
> The publishers of HTML5

That would be me, and I assure you that I am not going to be doing any 
informing of the millions of authors who make this mistake.


> > Nobody did it in the past ten years, why would they do it now?
>
> Nobody over the last 10 years informed Authors very about Validation and 
> Accessibility, but they are at last getting to grips with it..

On the contrary, both the validation and accessibility efforts have spent 
massive amounts of resources on evangelisation.


> > I believe it is unrealistic to expect authors to split semantics that 
> > finely.
>
> They do...

The data suggests that the majority of authors do not distinguish subtle 
semantics like this. (I mean, more than 99% of people don't use rev="" at 
all, for instance.)


> > Authors who today use rev="made" could equally well use rel="author" 
> > without loss of generality IMHO.
>
> OK then example:
> 
> I am the author of numerous websites and I decide (like many people do) 
> to place some links on my homepage a portfolio If you like.
>
> My Homepage is at : http://groovydeveloper.com/
>
> Here is my link <a rel="author" href="http://somegroovysite.com/">Groovy 
> Site</a>
>
> Above Statement (In HTML4) says
> 
> <http://somegroovysite.com/> Authored < http://groovydeveloper.com/>
> 
> Which Is rubbish its the other way round

So say it the other way around, e.g.:

   <p>I wrote <a href="http://somegroovysite.com/">Groovy Site</a>.</p>

You don't actually need a rel="" at all. What problem is the rel="" 
solving for you?

If you really wanted to use rel="", you could define a new value, say 
"sample-work", and use that:

   <a rel="sample-work" href="http://somegroovysite.com/">Groovy Site</a>


> The Same statement in HTML5 will say (because @rel is a reverse and 
> inverse link type)

I don't know what you mean by "reverse and inverse"; where do the 
specifications define it that way and what does it mean?


> > If there are redundant features that are only used 0.2% of the time, 
> > we should probably remove them, yes. Are there any?
>
> A lot considering that the average website only uses 19 elements[1] How 
> many are there in HTML5?

Many more; are any redundant? We've removed <acronym> because of it being 
redundant with <abbr>, I don't really know of any other redundant ones.


On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Martin McEvoy wrote:
> Martin McEvoy wrote:
> > 
> > rel=author on the whole only relates to published documents,
> > rel=made<---oops! 
> rev=made
> > relates to  Documents, Music, Photos, Videos, Sunday Lunch! Literaly
> > anything that can be *made*
> 
> But you knew that ;-)

I believe this makes my point more strongly than anything else that has 
been said in this thread. Even someone who is asking for rev="" to be kept 
(and thus can be assumed to be informed on the matter) makes the very 
mistake that our data shows is a common mistake. How can we expect your 
average HTML author, who couldn't care less about HTML, to get this right 
if even we get it wrong?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'