[uf-discuss] Primary among alternates Re: WAS: Visible Data

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi MIke,

I think we may the victim of a major miscommunication, aggravated by  
the choice of subject.  Let me start over, to see if I understand.

> resolve this one specific use case.)  Consider these three URLs:
>
> 	http://www.foo.com/toyota/4runner/1999/
> 	http://www.foo.com/toyota/1999/4runner/
> 	http://www.foo.com/1999/toyota/4runner/
> 	
> Assuming they point to the same basic content but have different
> breadcrumbs:
>
> 	Home >> Toyota >> 4Runner >> 1999
> 	Home >> Toyota >> 1999 >> 4Runner
> 	Home >> 1999 >> Toyota >> 4Runner


Given your use case, you are trying to distinguish between various  
human-clickable links that point to the same resource.   You want to  
mark one as "preferred" or "default" while still making it clear that  
the other links are alternate views of -- or rather, routes to -- the  
same content.

Is that a reasonable formulation of your problem?

When put that way, this sounds like very analogous to "alternates":

http://microformats.org/wiki/alternates-brainstorming

While the context is different, I think the semantic load is very  
similar.  The difficulty I have is that -- at least the way I  
understood your description, I have difficulty imagining a page where  
I see all three at the same time.  Given that, it is hard for me to  
understand *where* the information would be encoded, as your proposed  
footer:

> 	This page is a duplicate of <a
> href="http://www.foo.com/toyota/4runner/1999/"
> rel="primary">www.foo.com/toyota/4runner/1999/</a>.

feels (at least to me) somewhat contrived.   It is precisely that  
difficulty in conceptualizing concrete use cases that makes me feel  
like this isn't a viable candidate for the microformat process.

However, I'm willing to be proved wrong. If you could perhaps give me  
a link to a single real-world web page that -- in itself -- needs  
this solution, then I might feel we could actually help you.

Otherwise, this sounds like more a matter of using appropriate HTML  
head tags to link the page against some authoritative metadata, e.g.  
where multiple pages link to an authoritative GUID with different  
"rel" attributes.  But if that's what you want to do, then this group  
doesn't have a core competency in that area, so we may not be the  
appropriate place to discuss that.

Does that make sense?

Best,
-- Ernie P.


On Oct 27, 2006, at 12:46 AM, Mike Schinkel wrote:

> Let me give another example for this
> use-case (although I'm learning there may be existing things in  
> HTML to
> resolve this one specific use case.)  Consider these three URLs:
>
> 	http://www.foo.com/toyota/4runner/1999/
> 	http://www.foo.com/toyota/1999/4runner/
> 	http://www.foo.com/1999/toyota/4runner/
> 	
> Assuming they point to the same basic content but have different
> breadcrumbs:
>
> 	Home >> Toyota >> 4Runner >> 1999
> 	Home >> Toyota >> 1999 >> 4Runner
> 	Home >> 1999 >> Toyota >> 4Runner
>
> However, there really are the same page and I'd like to be able to  
> say that
> one of them is the "primary" or "authoritative" one (the website  
> owner would
> decide which one) and in the two that are not "primary" or  
> "authoritative"
> they would point to the one that is.  It's possible that you could  
> have the
> following visible on the page:
>
> 	This page is a duplicate of <a
> href="http://www.foo.com/toyota/4runner/1999/"
> rel="primary">www.foo.com/toyota/4runner/1999/</a>.
>
> As I said, this is but one example of data that helps describe a  
> page that I
> can envision I will need and that I believe could benefit the web  
> in general
> if it exists. I wish I had fleshed out my other examples at this  
> point but I
> haven't yet, and I certainly don't want to get the shot down because I
> present them prematurely prepared.