Abstract
Support feed autodiscovery via <a> elements
Status
Open
Rationale
The rel, type, and href attributes are used in <link> elements for autodiscovery. <a> has always (since HTML 1) had the same attributes as <link>.
Proposal
The key change is to section 3.1:
3.1 Definition of an autodiscovery element An Atom autodiscovery element is a link element, as defined in section 12.3 of HTML 4 [W3C.REC-html401-19991224]. As with other types of link elements, an autodiscovery element MAY appear within the <head> element of an HTML or XHTML document, but it MUST NOT appear within the <body>.
It would become:
3.1 Definition of an autodiscovery element An Atom autodiscovery element is either a <link> or <a> element, as defined in sections 12.2 and 12.3 of HTML 4 [W3C.REC-html401-19991224]. Per the HTML specification, <link> elements MAY appear within the <head> element and MUST NOT appear within the <body>. <a> MAY appear within the <body> and MUST NOT appear within the <head>.
Impacts
User agents will be required to check both the head and the body for possible feeds.
Notes
If a feed is already linked to in the body of a document, that information will no longer need to be duplicated in head.