[microformats-discuss] url canonicalization

[Kevin Marks]

On Sep 26, 2005, at 12:46 PM, Andreas Haugstrup wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 21:34:37 +0200, Ryan King <ryan at technorati.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> http://username.livejournal.com/
>> http://livejournal.com/~username/
>> http://livejournal.com/users/username/
>>
>> Perhaps there is a case for using a microformat for declaring one of  
>> these as canonical. It doesn't seem to me that rel="canonical" or  
>> rel="self" will cover this.
>
> rel="alternate"? It's in the HTML 4 spec so you don't have to write up  
> a microformat. :o)
>

Alternate is fine, except it doesn't indicate which should be  
considered the preferred one, and is also combined with other  
indicators (eg lang)

Expressing which is the canonical link alternative is useful.

Possibly related is this discussion on translations from January:

http://epeus.blogspot.com/ 
2005_01_01_epeus_archive.html#110513233021128637

There the notion of rel="original" and rel="translation" was mooted.

I think the notion of "canonical" is distinct from this.

The other possibly-related term is rel="bookmark" which indicates which  
link to preserve for later reference (used for blog permalinks among  
other things).