RFC 4685 (the threading extension) defines a new way to link to an atom entry:
<thr:in-reply-to ref='tag:example.org,2006:/entry-atom-id'/>
This is a link to the atom entry with the given atom ID. Notice that there is
no information given about how to retrieve the entry. If you want to add that
information, we can add a link to the feed:
<thr:in-reply-to ref='tag:example.org,2006:/entry-atom-id'
source='http://example.org/feed' />
It seems wrong to me to standardize on a mechanism that isn't using URIs for
identifying entries, especially since the idea of permalinks already exists for
HTML representations of entries. Is this (atom:id,feed-uri) mechanism going to
be the standard mechanism to link to individual atom entries in Atom IETF
specifications?
If so, then this mechanism should be generalized. For example, I would like to
use it for a "via" link relation and the "related" link relation. For example,
it could be implemented as an "entry-link" element that is just like atom:link,
except that it has @ref and @source. Then "in-reply-to" would just be a link
relation, and I could write:
<link rel='in-reply-to' href='http://example.org/entry.html'/>
for replying to a web page.
I could then reuse the "in-reply-to" link relation in my entries' HTML
representation <html:link rel='in-reply-to'/>
- Brian
