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See <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/links.html#linkTypes>. It's unclear why these link relations can not appear on a <link> element (the same could be asked about "bookmark" and "external", but let's focus on these for now). Please elaborate.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: This is a mis-use of the bug system. Please only report actual problems, don't request explanations using the bug system. To answer your question, though: To simplify user agent requirements. There are no use cases for those annotations to be used on <link> as far as I can tell.
The issue tracker was used because you apparently do not process working group email anymore. An indeed, the advice in the decision policy is that sending email (step 0) is optional. With respect to this one: the subject says "nofollow/noreferrer not allowed on <link>". I believe it should be allowed. Your reasoning: "to simplify UA requirements" doesn't compute; by treating <a> and <link> differently you actually make things more *complicated*. See also the WG thread at <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Aug/0061.html> concerning "external". For "bookmark": the definition for this used to make sense on <link> in HTML4, so by introducing a distinction you yourself made things more complicated in the first place.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: Treating <a> and <link> differently does not make things more complicated in practice.
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/124