[uf-discuss] rev'ing rel-directory

[Danny Ayers]

I'm afraid I've missed discussions around rel-directory [1], but was
prompted to take a look after stumbling over an OPML distributed
directories tutorial [2], wondering how best to do this using
microformats.

OPML uses an attribute called "inclusion" to say that a remote
hierarchical dir is a sub dir of the local element. It's a neat idea,
essentially Gopher on top of HTTP+XML. But given the linking
capablitities of HTML, the OPML is redundant, as long as there is a
way of expressing "inclusion".

rel-directory would appear to be in the frame for an alternative based
on existing standards, only it's directed the opposite way :

rel="directory"
   indicates that the referenced resource is a directory which does or
should contain the current page

But HTML to the rescue, how about:

rev="directory"
   indicates that the current element is a directory element which
contains the referenced resource

Does that make sense?

The most obvious application of this would be in XOXO documents, along
the lines of the distributed dir idea.

A potentially cool demo application might be to transclude [3] any
remote page, stripped down to hierarchy+ labelled links. If this was
done to one level of transclusion, and the links in the remote page
rewritten to something like
http://mydir.org/tree?remote=http://thatpage.com/stuff so they could
be fed through the tree-browser, the demo could reveal the current web
as a "World Outline". Anyone got a bit of Ajax time on their hands?

Cheers,
Danny.

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-directory
[2] http://hosting.opml.org/amyloo/osite/help/howtos/distdir.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion

-- 

http://dannyayers.com