Subject: Re: [Fwd: I-D Action:draft-saintandre-atomlink-discuss-00.txt]

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:43:28 -0600

On 05/29/2008 8:08 AM, Brian Smith wrote:

> "related" should be used when you need to store a link for some
> reason and you don't care if/how it is exposed to any users along the
> way. Basically, rel="related" should almost never be used. If you
> need the UA to display some links to the user then you should put
> those links in the atom:content using (X)HTML markup to guarentee (as
> much as possible) that they show up (since not all Uas expose
> "related" links). If you don't want the UA to display the link then
> you should use something other than rel="related" because some UA's
> will expose all "related" links.

So is it fair to say that Atom link relations are designed for automated
use by Atom user agents, not for presentation to human users?

If that is the case, then I misunderstood their purpose and it seems
that it would be more productive for me to pursue definition of a new
link relation for XHTML, not Atom.

My apologies for the confusion.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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From: James M Snell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:02:50 -0700

> My apologies for the confusion.

I wouldn't agree. Atom link relations can be intended for automated use 
and/or for presentation to human users.  It depends on the definition of 
the rel attribute.

- James

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From: "Brian Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 16:38:06 -0700

James M Snell wrote:
> I wouldn't agree. Atom link relations can be intended for 
> automated use and/or for presentation to human users. 
> It depends on the definition of the rel attribute.

I agree with James and Aristotle that some link relations might be
"intended" for human users. However, few clients actually present the atom
links to users, so the only practical way to ensure the users see them is to
put them in the atom:content as HTML links. If you put the links in the
content *and* in atom:link elements, then if your users *do* happen to be
using a client that exposes the atom links, then they will see each link
twice. So, I think we should put links intended for people in atom:content
*only* to avoid that redundancy which could lead to confusion.

I think you would only want the user to be exposed to a "discuss" link if
the client can do something useful with it. In that case, I think it makes
sense to mark it up (only) with atom:link. However, your proposal doesn't
explain how to do something useful with the link, and that is why it is
difficult to see why rel="discuss" adds any value over alternative ways of
marking up the link.

Regards,
Brian

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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:15:28 -0600

> difficult to see why rel="discuss" adds any value over alternative ways of

Thanks for the clarifications. I'm going to drop the idea for now, since
I have many other higher-priority work items to complete, but I may
revisit it in the future after I've thought about it more.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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From: Pete Brunet <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:32:13 -0500

>From Brian Smith on 05/29/2008 09:08 AM

Basically, rel="related" should almost never be used. If you need the UA 
to display some links to the user then you should put those links in the 
atom:content using (X)HTML markup to guarentee (as much as possible) that 
they show up (since not all Uas expose "related" links). If you don't want 
the UA to display the link then you should use something other than 
rel="related" because some UA's will expose all "related" links.

Brian, What about rel="enclosure"?  Listing 4 at 
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-atom10.html shows 
enclosures like

    <link rel="enclosure" 
          type="audio/mpeg"
          title="MP3"
          href="http://www.example.org/myaudiofile.mp3"
          length="1234" />

Should enclosures also "almost never be used", but exposed via the content 
element instead?  How would the above enclosure be coded in the content 
element?  What do UAs do with "enclosure"?  Do they display the title as 
link text with the href as the target?

I've been thinking of enclosures as large relateds so that is what lead me 
to ask. 

Thanks,
Pete Brunet
                                                                          
IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development
11501 Burnet Road, MS 9022E004, Austin, TX 78758
Voice: (512) 838-4594, Cell: (512) 689-4155
Ionosphere: WS4G

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From: "Sylvain Hellegouarch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:07:43 +0200 (CEST)

> I've been thinking of enclosures as large relateds so that is what lead me

This is really a context dependent question. If you one sees the World
solely through the prism of browsers and feed readers it might make sense
to pay more attention to the atom:content than to the meta-data carried by
the entry. However, there are other people who use Atom in contexts that
have nothing to do with that prism and they quite happily use the whole
arsenal of features RFC 4287 provides.

- Sylvain

-- 
Sylvain Hellegouarch
http://www.defuze.org