[whatwg] Regarding "Examples for rel=tag"

[Hugh Guiney]

Didn't mean to go off-list with this. Posting the prior exchange
before I respond:

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 7:36 PM, Hugh Guiney <hugh.guiney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>> Because it was invented before <article>, so consumers apply it to the
>> whole document and don't know about <article>. In other words, backwards
>> compatibility.
>
> But if a consumer uses <article>, doesn't that take them out of the
> backwards-compat category?
>
> Also, as I pointed out in the original post, consumers already use
> rel=tag intending for it to apply only to portions of a page.

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2012, Hugh Guiney wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>> > Because it was invented before <article>, so consumers apply it to the
>> > whole document and don't know about <article>. In other words,
>> > backwards compatibility.
>>
>> But if a consumer uses <article>, doesn't that take them out of the
>> backwards-compat category?
>
> How so? I mean, Google will work the same (for example) regardless of
> whether Googlebot supports <article> or not.
>
>
>> Also, as I pointed out in the original post, consumers already use
>> rel=tag intending for it to apply only to portions of a page.
>
> Consumers or producers? What matters here is not changing _consumer_
> behaviour, so that we don't break pages written with the assumption that
> they work as they do now.