Subject: [link-relations] prev / next / bookmark

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 12:05:19 +1100

Mike,

Just a heads-up: these are what I intend to submit to IANA, based on previous discussion. If you'd like a different wording, please says so.

Regards,

-----------

Relation Name:
 prev

Description:
 Indicates that the link's context is a part of a series, and
 that the previous in the series is the link target.

Reference:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#link-type-prev

Notes:

----------------

Relation Name:
 next

Description:
 Indicates that the link's context is a part of a series, and
 that the next in the series is the link target.

Reference:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#link-type-next

Notes:

---------------

 Relation Name:
    bookmark

 Description:
    Gives a permanent link to use for bookmarking purposes.

 Reference:    
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#link-type-bookmark

Notes:

---------------

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

---

From: "Michael(tm) Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 11:02:13 +0900

Looks fine.

Looks fine.

Looks fine.

I have a general comment about the use of "context" that I'll send in
another message.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike

---

From: "Michael(tm) Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 11:43:09 +0900

Hi Mark,

> @2010-11-09 12:05 +1100:
> Just a heads-up: these are what I intend to submit to IANA, based on
> previous discussion. If you'd like a different wording, please says so.

I have a question: How is a user of the registry expected to know what is
meant by the by the term "the link's context"?

Would you consider defining that term somewhere within the registry itself?

  http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relations.xhtml

For example, a Notes or Terminology subheading after the Reference
subheading might be an appropriate place.

If that term were unambiguously defined somewhere in RFC 5988, it might be
adequate (but still suboptimal IMHO) to just expect that users of the
registry had read the RFC.

However, I can't see that it is unambiguously defined in the RFC.

What I can find is that there's a section titled "Context IRI" that starts
with this paragraph:

  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#section-5.2
  By default, the context of a link conveyed in the Link header field is
  the IRI of the requested resource.

So that defines "the context of a link conveyed in the Link header field".
But what about links that are not conveyed in the Link header field?

For that case, the closest I can find to a definition is in Appendix A,
"Notes on Using the Link Header with the HTML4 Format"

  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#appendix-A
  In HTML4, the link element can be mapped to links as specified here by
  using the "href" attribute for the target URI, and "rel" to convey the
  relation type, as in the Link header.  The context of the link is the URI
  associated with the entire HTML document.

So that's clear enough as far as the case of HTML4 documents go. And I
think readers are capable of inferring that applies to XHTML1 and HTML5 and
XHTML5 documents as well. But what about for non-HTML documents?

I'm really not trying to split hairs here -- I just don't think the meaning
of the term "the link's context" is going to be obvious to users of the
registry, and I don't think it's unreasonable for users of the registry to
expect to have the term explicitly defined. And I think the optimal place
to define it is somewhere in the "front matter" (for lack of a better term)
of the registry itself.

  --Mike

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:56:37 +1100

It's a good question.

We're using "context" here as a shorthand for context IRI. 

The long answer is that the context is defined by the application of the link; i.e., if your define "stylesheet" to import a stylesheet into an HTML page, you need to say where to look for links (e.g., the link header, in the HTML) as well as what it applies to (in this case, the whole HTML document).

Contrast that to how XSLT would use stylesheet; it might not decide to look into HTTP headers, and apply it to a different context (just for the purpose of the example).

As such, using 'context' is more about not misleading people into making assumptions about the link's scope than it is about providing a firm definition. However, as I said before, I'm not fixated on this terminology.

getting terminology up onto the registry page is an interesting idea; I'll look into it.

Cheers,