Subject: Re: feed autodiscovery

From: Aristotle Pagaltzis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 18:34:53 +0100

* Erik Wilde <[email-masked]> [2009-02-26 03:15]:
> is there a reason why this was never completed, is it
> considered unnecessary, or is there a standard? and are
> people currently just pointing to informal documents and
> waiting for HTML5?

Pretty much the last one. It was decided all around that this
belonged in the HTML spec and no further work was done.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>

---

From: Erik Wilde <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:42:48 -0800

> belonged in the HTML spec and no further work was done.

is that overly pedantic, or wouldn't it be true that anything that HTML 
did would only apply to HTML5 and therefore would not apply to any other 
web pages? i always thought it would be better if there were a link 
relationship registry and not a hardcoded list in the HTML spec, but 
then again, even with that approach, this would not change anything for 
older HTML versions, i guess.

apart from these formal questions: it is therefore believed that HTML5 
will do the right thing and browsers will hopefully start to implement 
whatever they are specifying?

thanks,

dret.

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From: Aristotle Pagaltzis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 19:10:32 +0100

* Erik Wilde <[email-masked]> [2009-03-01 18:50]:
> i always thought it would be better if there were a link
> relationship registry and not a hardcoded list in the HTML
> spec

There is already such an effort. Someone else will have to supply
the link…

> it is therefore believed that HTML5 will do the right thing and
> browsers will hopefully start to implement whatever they are
> specifying?

Browsers already implement autodiscovery. But yeah, it does look
like they’ll implement parts of HTML5, at least. They already do,
in fact. And this piecemeal implementation and standardisation is
supposedly the expected route anyway, or something.

Regards,

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From: Peter Keane <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 13:22:03 -0600

> There is already such an effort. Someone else will have to supply

Here's the link:

http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-nottingham-http-link-header-03.txt

--peter

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From: Erik Wilde <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:22:51 -0800

> http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-nottingham-http-link-header-03.txt

thanks a lot for the link! 
http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-nottingham-http-link-header-04.txt is the 
latest version, btw, and i have updated my atom landscape overview to 
also include a link to that draft, which i hope will become an RFC.

http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/atom-landscape.html

it seems to me that this draft and HTML5 are currently out of sync when 
it comes to linking to feeds. HTML5 explicitly defines a "feed" relation 
(http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#link-type-feed), whereas the 
draft only has "alternate" and thus probably is based on current 
practice. is HTML5 expected to maybe add "feed" (and whatever else new 
link relations it may introduce) to the registry, or wouldn't it be 
easier to include this in the registry from the very beginning, so that 
HTML5 can count on it?

but then again, if "feed" would be defined by that draft, its semantics 
would also have to be defined by it, because there currently is no 
stable document defining it. which in a way brings me back to my initial 
question of where those semantics are currently defined anywhere...

thanks and cheers,

dret.

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From: Jan Algermissen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:34:58 +0100

Hi,

> http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-nottingham-http-link-header-03.txt

There currently is a thread on the www-tag that is somewhat related  
and AFAIU is likely to influence the Link header draft:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2009Feb/0270.html

Jan

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From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 15:14:02 +1100

Hi Erik,

On 02/03/2009, at 7:22 AM, Erik Wilde wrote:
> thanks a lot for the link! http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-nottingham-http-link-header-04.txt 
>  is the latest version, btw, and i have updated my atom landscape  
> overview to also include a link to that draft, which i hope will  
> become an RFC.
>
> it seems to me that this draft and HTML5 are currently out of sync  
> when it comes to linking to feeds. HTML5 explicitly defines a "feed"  
> relation (http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#link-type- 
> feed), whereas the draft only has "alternate" and thus probably is  
> based on current practice. is HTML5 expected to maybe add  
> "feed" (and whatever else new link relations it may introduce) to  
> the registry, or wouldn't it be easier to include this in the  
> registry from the very beginning, so that HTML5 can count on it?

Like any application of the framework described in that draft, HTML5  
has to opt into it; the only exceptions to that are HTTP headers  
(which the draft itself defines) HTML4 (being grandfathered in with  
significant pain, see the TAG thread), and Atom (being changed  
explicitly, and only slightly, by the draft).

Since HTML5 is a work-in-progress, it's not really appropriate to talk  
about it in the draft; if they want to define how to hook in, they're  
more than welcome to do so (and we've worked to address as many of  
their concerns as possible, but only time will tell...).

Likewise, I've tried to avoid defining new relations in the draft  
itself; that's not what it's trying to do.

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/