[uf-discuss] rel-tag: Sorry, I'm confused as to what it means

[Ciaran McNulty]

On 7/11/06, Lee Amosslee <lee at shopinberkeley.com> wrote:
> So, if I apply rel-tag, am I saying that this is an important link?
>
> Am I missing something?

A little, I saw a couple of earlier replies but thought there were
some bits I could clarify.

With markup like:
<p>Tags:   <a rel="tag" href="http://technorati.com/tag/foo">bar</a></p>

You are not, as I think you've assumed, tagging the linked URL with
the tag 'bar'.  What you're actually doing is tagging the current page
with the tag 'foo'.

I don't believe the content of the A is actually relevant to the
tagging semantics, although having it match the tag is a good idea.
This presumably frees you up to use different capitalisation or even
language.

>From http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag:

"By adding rel="tag" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the
destination of that hyperlink is an author-designated "tag" (or
keyword/subject) of the current page"

... i.e. the semantics say something about the current page, not the
URL being pointed at

"Tags are embedded in HTTP URIs in a well-defined manner so that the
tag embedded in an HTTP URI can be mechanically extracted from that
URI. Specifically, the last segment of the path portion of the URI
(after the final "/" character) contains the tag value"

... implying the tag in the example would be tagged with 'foo' rather than 'bar'

"The linked page SHOULD exist"

... note that the linked page doesn't even have to be a real one, it's
just a very good idea to link it to a page that is the index for all
similarly tagged pages, to avoid presenting broken links.

Hope this clarifies a few points?

-Ciaran