[whatwg] a rel=attachment

[Tantek Çelik]

2011/7/14 Darin Fisher <darin at chromium.org>:
> On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Glenn Maynard <glenn at zewt.org> wrote:
>
>> 2011/7/14 Ian Fette (イアンフェッティ) <ifette at google.com>
>>
>> > Many websites wish to offer a file for download, even though it could
>> > potentially be viewed inline (take images, PDFs, or word documents as an
>> > example). Traditionally the only way to achieve this is to set a
>> > content-disposition header. *However, sometimes it is not possible for
>> the
>> >
>>
>> This has been raised a couple times:
>>
>> http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2010-July/027455.html
>>
>> http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-April/031190.html(thread
>> was derailed partway through)
>>
>> I've wanted this several times and I'm strongly in favor of it.
>>
>
> Yes, it seems very useful.

Indeed, and has been pointed out, already specified (since 2005) and
implemented as well for HTML:

http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-enclosure

re-using the "enclosure" term from the Atom format (thus minimal bikeshedding)


>> After mulling this over with some application developers who are trying to
>> > use this functionality, it seems like adding a "rel" attribute to the <a>
>> > tag would be a straightforward, minimally invasive way to address this
>> use
>> > case. <a rel=attachment href=blah.pdf> would indicate that the browser
>> >
>>
>> This isn't enough; the filename needs to be overridable as well, as it is
>> with Content-Disposition.  My recommendation has been:
>>
>> <a href=image.jpg download>
>> <a href=f1d2d2f924e986ac86fdf7b36c94bcdf32beec15.jpg download=picture.jpg>
>>
>> where the first is equivalent to Content-Disposition: attachment, and the
>> second is equivalent to Content-Disposition: attachment;
>> filename=picture.jpg.
>>
>>
> This is an interesting variation!  I like that it addresses the issue of
> providing a name for the download.  Using the term "download" here is also
> nice.

Agreed.

I've captured the suggestion on a brainstorming page:

http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-enclosure-brainstorming

Feel free to contribute or iterate.

Thanks,

Tantek

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