The problem I have with the WHAT-WG definition of the alternate and feed
relations is the unintended conflict that occurs when the alternate
representation of a page happens to be an Atom Entry Document.
The HTML5 draft says,
"If the alternate keyword is used with the type attribute set to
the value application/rss+xml or the value application/atom+xml,
then the user agent must treat the link as it would if it had
the feed keyword specified as well."
It goes on to say,
"The feed keyword indicates that the referenced document is a
syndication feed. If the alternate link type is also specified,
then the feed is specifically the feed for the current document"
The problem with this is that the "application/atom+xml" media type is
also used for Atom Entry Documents:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href="entry.xml" />
The current WHAT-WG definition is inadequate.
There are three possible solutions:
1. We ask the WHAT-WG to fix their spec so the ambiguity in the Atom
media type is addressed
2. We add a type parameter to the application/atom+xml media type
to differentiate feed and entry documents,
e.g. application/atom+xml;type=feed,
application/atom+xml;type=entry
When the media type is used without the type parameter,
type=feed is assumed.
3. We define a new media type for Atom Entry Documents,
e.g. application/atomentry+xml
Given that there are significantly fewer instances of Atom Entry
Documents that would need to be updated and the fact that the ambiguity
in the Atom media type has come up as a problem before, I'd actually
lean strongly in favor of options 2 or 3.
- James
Henri Sivonen wrote:
>
> On Nov 28, 2006, at 22:11, Edward O'Connor wrote:
>
>> WHAT WG seems like a neutral ground, syndication-format wise, so
>> perhaps they're best positioned to spec feed autodiscovery in a way
>> that makes everybody happy.
>
> +1 for leaving speccing this to the WHATWG.
>
> --Henri Sivonen
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
>
