Subject: Re: General/Specific [was: Feed History / Protocol overlap]

From: Antone Roundy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 12:02:49 -0600

On Oct 19, 2005, at 11:12 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote:

> "next"
> "next-chunk"
> "next-page"
> "next-archive"
> "next-entries"
> are all workable for me.
...

> Perhaps people could +1/-1 the following options:
>
> * Reconstructing a feed should use:
>    a) a specific relation, e.g., "prev-archive"
>    b) a generic relation, e.g., "previous"

I'd prefer "prev-page".  "prev-archive" doesn't sound right for  
paging through search results.  Also, "prev-archive" or "next- 
archive" (whichever ends up going forward in time) doesn't quite work  
if the final step forward points to the subscription feed URI (which  
isn't an "archive".  That's a small matter since it's only that last  
step, but in search results type cases, "archive" would definitely be  
odd.

Just a little follow up on what I wrote last night about generic vs.  
specific link relations: "related" is a generic term that is likely  
to be a bit of a catch-all for links that don't have a specific  
relation defined for them.  "alternate" is a specific relation  
created for one of the major historical use cases for rss/link.  The  
proposed but not accepted "about" would have been the specific  
relation for the other major use case that rss/link was commonly used  
for.

"related" could conceivably handle the hypothetical use case of  
traversing a chain of different feeds--you'd just have to remember  
which "related" link to a feed document you had already traversed to  
know which one to follow next to continue down the chain.  It  
wouldn't be quite as nice for such an application as having a "next"  
and "prev" for that use, but I'd rather see it done that way till  
it's clear that such a thing is even needed than see intrafeed paging  
links used for interfeed navigation.

---

From: "Byrne Reese" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:06:12 -0400

>     a) a specific relation, e.g., "prev-archive"

-1

>     b) a generic relation, e.g., "previous"

+1