Re: Link types and profiles

here are some things that might help you on the subject of Link Relation 
Types, HTML, etc.

- HTML's guidance on the use of Link Relation Types is, IMO, vague.
- HTML is not the only representation format where Link Relation Types can 
be used (re Atom, HAL, Collection+JSON, etc.)
- the Web linking spec is a good source of recommended best practice on 
defining Link Relation Type values[1]
- a much stronger and clearer guidance on HTML's use of "profile" Link 
Relation Type stalled in 2010[2]
- the Microformat team (led by Tantek Celik of XMDP fame) has picked up the 
"profile" spec[3]
- I led an experiment at RESTFest 2011 on using profiles w/ HTML that had 
pretty good results[4]

finally, I think there is a good deal of promise in the notion of defining 
application-level semantics independent of a generic media type (HTML, HAL, 
etc.) and am continuing to work on this.  My approach is to continue to use 
the "profile" Link Relation Type value as a way to apply these semantics to 
a representation in a way very much in line w/ the way HTML4 uses "profile" 
and via a Link Header compatible w/ RFC5988.

Hope this helps. 

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988
[2] http://dev.w3.org/html5/profiles/source/
[3] http://microformats.org/wiki/html5-profile
[4] http://amundsen.com/hypermedia/profiles/
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On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 5:40 PM, Judson Lester <[email protected]> wrote:

>  
>
> This may be a remedial question but:
>
> Is or isn't it legitimate to add link types (i.e. values for rel 
> attributes) in document profiles?  
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-links : "Authors may wish to 
> define additional link types not described in this specification. If they 
> do so, they should use a profile to cite the conventions used to define the 
> link types. Please see the profile attribute of the HEAD element for more 
> details."
>
> but
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#profiles : "The profile 
> attribute of the HEAD specifies the location of a meta data profile." and 
> goes on to strongly imply that the profile describes how to interpret META 
> tag data, but is otherwise pretty quiet about how to use it.
>
> There's XMDP, of course, which tries to address link type/meta by 
> suggesting that you define explicit rel properties - but there's sort of a 
> semantic leap between <meta name="<property>" value="<value>"> and <link 
> rel=<value>>
>
> If it is legit, why not legit to add acceptable values for any tag 
> attribute (without describing *which* tags it's legit on)?
>
> Judson
>
>
>