Ian Hickson wrote:
On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Martin McEvoy wrote:
It basically says that the whole premise that HTML5 should drop *rev*
(a) because authors use it wrong, (b) Many authors use rev-stylesheet
wrong, is a MYTH and an inaccurate assessment of the *rev* attribute
As others have noted, the data does in fact show that rev="" is rarely
used for anything other than rev=made, and is, with the exception of
rev=made, usually used incorrectly when used at all.
The idea of removing it is to make validators more able to report these
mistakes, thus helping authors write better HTML.
OK then...
Despite your claims to the contrary, given the way that the "rel"
attribute and the related keywords are defined, rel=author does in fact
convey the semantics that rev=made did.
No It doesn't Reverse and Inverse properties are key factors of any
Semantics without both @rev and @rel there is hardly any semantics at
all just a one way stream of information, which most of the time you
have to guess what the Authors intentions were.
rel=author on the whole only relates to published documents, rel=made
relates to Documents, Music, Photos, Videos, Sunday Lunch! Literaly
anything that can be *made*
Removing "rev" doesn't affect previous pages, as they continue to be valid
HTML4 if they were valid HTML4 before, and UAs can continue to support
those semantics for as long as they want to support those pages.
I cant see anyone abandoning HTML4 soon at least not in my
lifetime....but you never know....
Furthermore, since the definition of "rel" in HTML5 allows relationships
in either direction to be defined, there is no need anymore for a separate
rev="" attribute.
So essentially @rel in html5 is breaking the semantics of @rel just
because it cant deal with @rev?
On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Martin McEvoy wrote:
There are 1517 instances of @rev
of those:
"made" occurs 83% of the time (1259 instances)
"stylesheet" occurs 8.2% of the time (124 instances)
The rest occur 8.9% of the time (135 instances)
These numbers support removing rev="" based on the design principles we
are using for HTML5.
the misuse of "stylesheet" is trivial and only a matter of informing
authors of their error
Well, who's going to be doing the informing?
The publishers of HTML5
Nobody did it in the past ten
years, why would they do it now?
Nobody over the last 10 years informed Authors very about Validation and
Accessibility, but they are at last getting to grips with it..
the fact that a high amount of authors are using rev-made is Inspiring
to say the least, because every made link type is a claim of ownership,
not authorship two totally different semantics.
I believe it is unrealistic to expect authors to split semantics that
finely.
They do...
Authors who today use rev="made" could equally well use
rel="author" without loss of generality IMHO.
OK then example:
I am the author of numerous websites and I decide (like many people do)
to place some links on my homepage a portfolio If you like.
My Homepage is at : http://groovydeveloper.com/
Here is my link <a rel="author" href="http://somegroovysite.com/";>Groovy
Site</a>
Above Statement (In HTML4) says
<http://somegroovysite.com/> Authored < http://groovydeveloper.com/>
Which Is rubbish its the other way round
The Same statement in HTML5 will say (because @rel is a reverse and
inverse link type)
<http://somegroovysite.com/> Authored < http://groovydeveloper.com/>
and
< http://groovydeveloper.com/> Authored <http://somegroovysite.com/>
@rel seems to be redundant because describing the link with rel="author"
doesn't actually tell you who the author of a is page you have to guess,
the statement is at most only half correct and again not expressing any
real semantics....
[edits]
If there are redundant features that are only used 0.2% of the time, we
should probably remove them, yes. Are there any?
A lot considering that the average website only uses 19 elements[1] How
many are there in HTML5?
[1] http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/pages.html
On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Martin McEvoy wrote:
That does not solve the "problem" of rev="made" because its not the same
as rel="author"
"author" can relate to multiple instances on a page saying "WE made
this", an Author may have no control over who claims authorship of a
page.
"made" is usually a single point perspective, Its a way of authors
claiming their own links in a statement saying "I made This".
I don't understand your distinction. rev=made and rel=author are
interchangeable,
No I guess you don't :-)
While I appreciate your feedback, I'm afraid that in this instance the
weight of the argument is more strongly in favour of dropping the
attribute, thus it has been dropped.
Unfairly From what I can tell
Thanks for your help anyway
--
Martin McEvoy
http://weborganics.co.uk/
