Re: Proposal: restricting <LINK> to hyperlinks

>>I don't think so.  Link is intended to define abstract *and* concrete
>>relationships between resources on the Web.  Link is independent of
>>HTML and does not in general define a button on a toolbar.  Instead,
>>a toolbar widget seeks out links associated with the relations
>>that are represented within the toolbar (i.e., the button is already
>>defined, it just takes its reference value from a link href).
>
>Wasn't the idea of a WG to work out these concepts? It is precisely the
>current ambiguity surrounding META and LINK I believe Bert is trying to
>resolve.

No.  The purpose of this WG is to resolve the syntax and semantics
of HTML and produce a specification that accurately describes them.

The purpose and scope of Link Relationships is currently outside the scope
of this WG.  They describe an aspect of the WWW architecture which is
independent of any rendering language.  For more info, please read the 
WWW design notes at

     <http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/DesignIssues/Overview.html>

The syntax of the LINK element in HTML is inside the scope of this WG,
as are the HTML-specific contents of the REL and REV attributes.

Finally, there is NO ambiguity surrounding META and LINK.
Yes, their functionality does overlap, but that is not ambiguous.
META assigns unstructured metainformation content to a name.
LINK defines a hyperlink relationship between the source document
and the resource defined by the parameters to the LINK element.
LINK is a special-case of META -- this specialization is significant
and useful to WWW applications.

NOTE TO THE CHAIR: If you want to expand the scope of the charter to
include all Link Relationships, then please request the IESG to add it
to the Charter.  However, I think it would be better for the WG to focus
on its current work.

 ....Roy T. Fielding  Department of ICS, University of California, Irvine USA
                      Visiting Scholar, MIT/LCS + World-Wide Web Consortium
                      (fielding@w3.org)                (fielding@ics.uci.edu)

Follow-ups

• Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)
• Murray Altheim (murray.altheim@nttc.edu )