[uf-discuss] xfolk: tags that aren't links

[Angus McIntyre]

The current spec for the xfolk microformat allows the inclusion of 
tags in a format like:

	<div class="meta">
	    <a rel="tag" href="/foo">foo</a>,
	    <a rel="tag" href="/bar">bar</a> ...
	</div>

This assumes that tags will always be linked to some other object. 
However, this isn't necessarily the case: I could imagine cases where 
a webmaster might want to provide a list of keywords associated with 
a link, but without linking those keywords (tags) to anything else.

Assuming that this is desirable, what would be the best way to 
represent this. I can think of various possibilities. One would be to 
simply omit the anchor:

	<div class="meta">foo, bar ...</div>

which conforms to the spec as it stands but means that any process 
reading the meta block would miss the fact that 'foo' and 'bar' are 
actually tags.

A second option might be to have:

	<div class="meta">
	    <a rel="tag" href="#">foo</a>,
	    <a rel="tag" href="#">bar</a> ...
	</div>

but this would confuse human users (i.e. the browser would display 
something that looked like a link, but just caused the page to reload 
when clicked).

A third option would be to use 'span' instead, thus:

	<div class="meta">
	    <span class="tag">foo</a>,
	    <span class="tag">bar</a> ...
	</div>

To me, this looks like the best option, as it marks the tags 
semantically, but doesn't mislead the user.

Anyone have any comments or suggestions, or have I overlooked some 
existing and better way of doing this?

Thanks,

Angus