[whatwg] IRC and WWW integration proposal

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Gryllida wrote:
>
> Usecase 1: I search for python and see a link to their website in search 
> results, and the search engine looks up both title and IRC info - so I 
> see webpage title, and a link to its irc network or channel.

There's nothing stopping search engines today from exposing IRC links they 
see in Web pages (either in <a> or <link> elements, or indeed elsewhere). 
So this is basically possible today.


> Usecase 2: Browsers implement some interface to display IRC channel 
> link or window when user visits a page. Advantages:

This should be possible today too.

If the need is a machine-readable link that is explicitly labeled as 
specific to the page in some way, then the simplest solution is to mint 
some new link rel types, as in:

   <link rel="official-irc-for-site" href="irc://example.com/#mysite"> 

If there is implementor interest, I recommend registering such a link type 
in the link type registry.

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