Hi Mark,
here's some feedback on the latest draft...:
1. Introduction
This document defines typed link relations, independent of the
context they occur in. It does so by clarifying the status of the
link relation registry established by Atom, and registering in it the
relations that are defined by HTML.
I think it does a bit more than "clarifying", as it establishes a new
registry.
> Furthermore, an HTTP header-field for conveying typed links was
defined in [RFC2068], but removed from [RFC2616], due to a lack of
implementation experience. Since then, several use cases for doing
so have surfaced. However, because it was removed, the status of the
Link header is unclear, leading some to consider minting new
application-specific HTTP headers instead of reusing it. This
document addresses this by re-specifying the Link header with updated
but backwards-compatible syntax.
Would it be useful to note that some UAs already support the Link header
for linking to stylesheets (I think Opera and Firefox...)?
5. The Link Header Field
Link = "Link" ":" #link-value
link-value = "<" URI-Reference ">" *( ";" link-param ) )
link-param = ( ( "rel" "=" relation-type )
| ( "rev" "=" relation-type )
| ( "type" "=" type-name )
| ( "title" "=" quoted-string )
| ( link-extension ) )
link-extension = token [ "=" ( token | quoted-string ) ]
relation-type = URI-Reference |
<"> URI-Reference *( SP URI-Reference) <">
I note that we lost the "anchor" parameter defined in RFC 2068, Section
19.6.2.4, so we are not strictly speaking backwards-compatible...
The title parameter MAY be used to label the destination of a link
such that it can be used as identification within a human-readable
menu.
-> s/MAY be/may be/ or /is/
6.2. Link Relation Type Registry
New relation types can be registered by IETF Review, as outlined in
[RFC5226]. Specifications of new values should use the following
template:
As far as I understand RFC5226, Section 4.1, this requires an RFC. Is
that the intent?
Appendix A. Notes on Using the Link Header with HTML
<html>
<head profile="http://example.com/profile1/";>
<link rel="foo" href="/foo">
</head>
[...]
could be represented as a header like this;
Link: </foo>; rel="http://example.com/profile1/foo";
Maybe use "bar" instead of one of the "foo"s...
Also: is this the proposal how to embed full URIs into HTML4? Or should
people just use the full URI in the rel value?
Other points:
- Comparison rules: I understand we only define link comparison for
relations used in the HTTP Link header, and the rule is
character-by-character, case-sensitive?
- We miss a "I18N Considerations" Section. It probably should mention
IRIs in general, and how to I18Nize the title parameter (-> RFC 2231???)
- Do we need to talk about migration issues from the old base URI to the
new base URI? Should both be treated the same when comparing relation
values?
Best regards, Julian
