On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:42:40 +0100, Jan Algermissen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
But that is an issue of linking semantics, not link target media types.
Wrong. The link relation 'alternate' is perfectly valid for both Entry and Feed documents, depending on what type of resource they are linked from. An index page of a website can have an 'alternate' relation to an Atom Feed, while an individual article page (or "entry" page) can have an 'alternate' relation to an Atom Entry. Both link relations are identical, but the client has absolutely no clue before it GETs the URI whether what sits on the other end is an Atom Feed or an Atom Entry.
Let's take Firefox as an example of a feed reader. When you browse to a page saying it has 'alternate' resources, you get a nice little orange "subscribe" button in the address field. Pushing it makes you a subscriber of that alternate resource. On an index page, that's fine, because the "alternate" resource is an Atom Feed. However, on an individual article page, Firefox will still display the "subscribe" button although it doesn't support subscribtion to the resource and subscribing to it in the first place doesn't make much sense.
Wouldn't it be a better experience to not get the "subscribe" button on the article page at all? Or do you prefer that it's there and that you need to press it and get an error message (that you most probably won't understand if you're not a technical user like you and me) to know that you can't subscribe to this alternate resource after all? What do you think?
I'd expect the user agent to look for links with 'here is a feed' semantics instead of looking for (arbitrary) links to certain media types.
The 'alternate' relation is fine for both uses. However, the WHATWG propsed 'feed' relation is a bit more explicit on the "subscribe to me" part. Still, an Atom Feed can be 'alternate' of an index page just as an Atom Entry can be 'alternate' of an article page. People shouldn't be forced to use the 'feed' relation, and I highly doubt that the widely deployed 'alternate' relation can be replaced that easilly.
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