2006/11/29, James M Snell:
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.
Already exposed here:
http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg19100.html
and there:
http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg19107.html
;-)
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
+1 (see above; see also Mark Baker's mail in this same thread –not yet
in the archives)
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
+1
When the media type is used without the type parameter,
type=feed is assumed.
I'd rather say: if there's no 'type' parameter, assume nothing, it can
be a feed or entry; this would make the "updated media-type" fully
backwards compatible with the current one (which shipped a year ago).
3. We define a new media type for Atom Entry Documents,
e.g. application/atomentry+xml
-1
--
Thomas Broyer
