After that, the amount of hyperbolic stop energy being slung around rel=short{foo} has exhausted my care for the subject.

Let me try to back you up a bit, maybe you’ll agree with your gut again.

First I must start with the removal of @rev in html 5. That was an amazingly dumb move, luckily it is a draft still is all I can say. Here is why I believe this:
1) 1 char diff argument: shut up you nub programmers
2) misuse: it’s night vs day, black vs white, there is no gray area except that which your confused minds have created. The confusion -I think- usually comes in to play when considering a value, which is easy if you truly understand the diff between @rel and @rev.
3) @rev values can be represented as @rel values: sure I agree but this can not be true without adding more rel values then are necessary with a @rev which is already in the html 4 spec for a reason. If you remove something with use you cause confusion on multiple fronts: first people have to become aware of the change, then they need to understand why the change was made, then they need to make the changes to their code base, and finally when they want to express rev=canonical with a @rel value, debates over what best @rel value represents the equivalent of another @rel value if it were used in @rev occur..

I submit the debate which the opposition to rev=canonical are having over rel=short* as evidence that @rev is required. A link with rev=canonical that is short is a short url of the canonical url by definition, thus rel=short* is redundant for the use case of discovering a short url for the canonical url of some document. Albeit, I think rel=shorturl (or whatever is finally decided on) could be used by the publisher to indicate a preferred short url(s), if say there were >1 rev=canonical.

In an algorithm to discover a short url for a document one method could be to scan all links and find the shortest rev=canonical, or if a rel=shorturl is provided then use that and stop scanning immediately. My point is that rev=canonical should be used. Also rel=shorturl adds a marginal benefit to rev=canonical.

Another point, a rel=shorturl is rev=canonical by definition, thus if you were to use rel=shorturl and @rev were alive and well as it should be, you should automatically add rev=canonical (even though it is implied).

Another argument the opposition make to using rev=canonical is that the number of rev=canonical’s are possibly infinite, so I say only list the rev=canonical’s which a user may find of interest for the use cases you can imagine.

Another case for using rev=canonical is using rev=canonical with rel=mobile perhaps? so that a user can scan rev=canonical’s for a rel=mobile url which is short enough to fit in the newest microblog gadget. Where a rel=mobile without rev=canonical could be the mobile site’s homepage, even better for this link would be rel=”mobile home” without rev=canonical.

I not good with words today. I was trying to say what Sam said:

“this “solution” on the canonical URL itself since it implies that the page it is attached to is itself canonical”

Hence, I’d stick with a solution that uses rel – so long as we can just pick an attribute “shorter alternative” or whatever that we can agree on :)

-d

why do you even care enough to write this blog post?

Because someone is wrong on the Internet! And I haven’t blogged in awhile, so I needed an excuse.

Sam

Sam

If we have this URL:

http://example.com/this/url/is/too/long

With these links in the head:

rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/this/url/is/too/long”
rev=”canonical” href=”http://ex.pl/ab”

Then, the URL http://ex.pl/ab will ideally lead to a 301 redirect. But, if not, it should have the same content as http://example.com/this/url/is/too/long — and therefore list the same reciprocal “canonical” relationship that leads back to the original page.

That seems disambiguated to me—even more so than rel="shorter" or whatnot. If the URL for a rel="shorter" link didn’t yield a redirect, we’d never know what was the original page without a corresponding rel="canonical" anyway.

rel=canonical was introduced so when people went to various urls that a search engine would know that the url specified in rel=canonical was the real one. Let’s do this to make life easier:

http://foo.com/A
and
http://foo.com/B

both go to the exact same page, and the publisher can’t for some reason redirect to the canonicalized page (maybe it’s amazon and they have stupid large urls with affiliate codes).

so if the former is canonical then this is present:

whether you go to /A or /B.

if they use rev=”canonical”:

Should only be shown if they are visitng /A not /B otherwise that rev statement implies that /A or /B are the canonical forms of “http://f.us/A”.

I think that’s why the rev attribute isn’t a very good one. Honestly I liked the suggestion (you made it maybe) for using rel=”shortcut alternative” or something.

Am I seeing potential ambiguity when there isn’t?

-d