hi, The ORE effort [1] that proposes a profile of Atom to meet its requirements [2], has a need to express that an Atom Entry provides information/metadata about some other resource. While this need can be met through the introduction of a rel with a value specific to the ORE effort (e.g. rel=" http://www.openarchives.org/ore/atom/about";), we came to understand that there are other Atom use cases in which Entries are about other resources. As such, we think it could be beneficial to register a relationship (e.g. rel="about") to express such "about-ness" in the IANA Link Relations registry [3].
The Atom use cases we refer to use Entries as containers to provide "metadata" about some web resource other than the Entry itself. For example, the GData Entry <http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/S_bcAOlK0io > is about the YouTube video by the Cribs < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_bcAOlK0io>: the atom:author, atom:title, and atom:content elements are metadata about the video. The same approach is used in Entries published by academic publishers: the atom:author, atom:title, etc. elements are metadata about a journal article that is described by the Entry. This class of Atom use cases contrasts with cases in which Atom Entries do not describe other resources, but are just ... err ... themselves. This is the case with most blog entries, in which e.g. atom:author is the creator of the Entry, atom:title is a title for the Entry assigned by the creator, etc. This metadata does pertain to the Entry itself, not to some external resource. We understand that an RFC that specifies the proposed rel="about" relationship would have to express which child elements of atom:entry pertain to the resource described by the Entry, and which to the Entry itself, whenever a rel="about" is present in an Entry. Our current thinking with this regard is as follows: (a) /entry/id, /entry/published, /entry/updated, /entry/rights, /entry/[EMAIL PROTECTED]"self", /entry/[EMAIL PROTECTED]"license" pertain to the Entry (b) all other child elements of /entry that are in the Atom namespace pertain to the resource that is the target of the "about" relationship. (c) for Atom extension elements: - The definition of the extension can specify whether the extension elements pertain to the resource that is the target of the "about" relationship. - In case no such definition is available, the extension elements pertain to the Entry. We would very much appreciate your feedback, both regarding the general idea of registering an "about" relationship, and regarding the specifics of the interpretation of child elements of atom:entry. Cheers Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael L. Nelson, Robert Sanderson [1] http://www.openarchives.org/ore/toc [2] http://www.openarchives.org/ore/documents/atom_revision_20080801.html [3] http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations.html -- Herbert Van de Sompel Digital Library Research & Prototyping Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library http://public.lanl.gov/herbertv/
