[uf-discuss] Citation and alternates-brainstorming

[Jeff McNeill]

Aloha folks,

There hasn't been much lately regarding the 'alternates'
discussion[1]. It seems that in the HTML spec[2], 'alternate' is meant
as something the user can choose between, i.e., style sheets[3],
and/or something the browser can try and render in a given rank order,
i.e., objects[4]. The suggested use of <ol> for preference and <ul>
for no preference is clever[1].

(this example modified from the wiki entry[1])

<ol class="alternates">
  <li><a href="example.mp3" rel="enclosure alternate"
type="audio/mpeg">MP3</a></li>
  <li><a href="example.wav" rel="enclosure alternate"
type="audio/wav">WAV</a></li>
  <li><a href="example.mov" rel="enclosure alternate"
type="video/quicktime">MOV</a></li>
</ol>

Another option may be to try and and bring up alternates to the level
of each being an hentry of an overall hfeed[5]. While that might
provide greater facility to allow for various metadata around a given
alternate (e.g., video vs. audio vs. format size, or even abbreviated
vs. longer versions of content), the simple uses cases may become a
bit stretched.

Any thoughts?

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/alternates-brainstorming
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/list.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/styles.html#didx-style_sheet
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#edef-OBJECT
[5] http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom

-- 
Sincerely,
Jeff McNeill
http://jeffmcneill.com/