[microformats-discuss] Proposing RelSource

[Tantek Ç elik]

Hi Andy,

On 7/12/05 6:42 AM, "Andy Skelton" <skeltoac at gmail.com> wrote:

> It should have come to attention sooner but I dug around W3C.org and
> found that rel="cite" is already defined in the XHTML 2.0 Hypertext
> Attribute Collection
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-hyperAttributes.html).

That is a *really* interesting observation that implies something a bit
more.

One of the principles of microformats is reuse.

And even though XHTML2 is far from *done*, and is far from achieving
widespread interoperable adoption (if it ever does), I can see a good point
being made to reuse 'rel' values from XHTML2 to mean the same thing in
HTML4/XHTML1.


> Also from that collection, href and cite attributes are defined and
> may coexist but they behave differently: The href attribute "specifies
> a URI that is actuated when the element is activated." For the cite
> attribute, "User Agents MUST provide a means for the user to actuate
> the link."

That's less interesting.  For reasons of validity, we must use href and cite
attributes only on the elements that have them in HTML4/XHTML1.


> In light of this, I see no reason to pursue a microformat for source
> links/citations/hat tips. If authors adopt rel="cite" they are
> preemptively applying a well-defined, semantic model that is both
> user-friendly and easily parsed by machines.

I see the conclusion as quite the opposite.  Because rel="cite" *is* defined
in XHTML2 drafts, and microformats allow you add rel values to HTML4/XHTML1
*now*, adopting the same convention makes a lot of sense.

If anything it bolsters the case for rel="cite" (as opposed to some other
value like rel="source").

> The subject of distributed discussion and markup indicating replies,
> updates, etc., is discussed at
> http://microformats.org/wiki/citation-brainstorming.

Very good.  I've added my point to the end of that document as well.

Thanks Andy,

Tantek