On Wednesday, January 12, 2005, at 09:57 AM, Robert Sayre wrote:
3. 4.2.2 says
atom:head elements MUST NOT contain more than one atom:link element with a rel attribute value of "alternate" that has the same type attribute value.
What if the atom:link elments have different hreflang values?
Or, for that matter, different titles and URIs. I think we should drop the restriction.
type: The reason for allowing multiple alternate links of different typs is obvious enough: you might have an HTML version, an Atom version (the current feed), an RSS 1.0 version, an RSS 2.0 version, a PDF version, etc. The client could decide which link to render (and could render more than one) based on its own processing capabilities, and perhaps a user preference. No restriction.
hreflang: Again, obvious: an English version, a Spanish version, a Japanese version, etc. The client could decide which to render based on the user's language preference. Drop the restriction.
title: What use would there be for this? If you just can't decide which of two titles to give your webpage??? And what would a client do with it? Choose one at random? Render both--two links identical except for their title? No benefit, plenty of detriment. Keep the restriction.
uri: An argument could be made for this one. For example, you might have two HTML versions: one using frames, and one that doesn't; one for broadband connections, one for dialup, etc. The client would have to render them all, or pick one essentially randomly (eg., the first one), but at least there's a reason for it. I wouldn't oppose dropping the restriction here.
