Profile For Using the Keyword "meta" As an XHTML/HTML Link Type

Abstract

This is a metadata profile a la section 6.12 (Link types) of the HTML 4.0 specification:-

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.

By referring to the URI http://purl.org/net/uriprofile/, you are associating a profile with your HTML / XHTML that allows you to use the keword "meta" as a link type in your rel and rev attributes.

Details

Use of this URI as an XHTML head@profile extends the allowed HTML link types from the ones in the specification to cover the keyword "meta" as well, except where this conflicts with link types defined in any other meta data profile.

Example Use

For example:-

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" 
      xml:lang="en" >
 <head profile="http://purl.org/net/uriprofile/">
   <title>Page Title</title>
   <link rel="meta" href="a.rdf" />
 </head>
 <body>
   [...]
 </body>
</html>

More About HTML Meta data Profiles

From the HTML 4.01 Recommendation:-

The profile attribute of the HEAD specifies the location of a meta data profile. The value of the profile attribute is a URI. User agents may use this URI in two ways:

In the case of this URI, we expect that the URI be used as a global identifier, although dereferencing the resource should always yield a description of the concept with which the URI carries.

References

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401
- The HTML 4.01 Specification
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1
- The XHTML 1.0 Specification
http://www.w3.org/2000/07/hs78#
- HyperRDF, Dan Connolly

Thanks to PURL for the URI, and to Dan Connolly for the inspiration.

SBP (© Sean B. Palmer). Last modified: $ Thursday, March 25, 2004 10:38:18 AM $