#microformats 2025-05-28

2025-05-28 UTC
[morganm], barnaby, Dryusdan, [qubyte], duanin2, [artlung], [Murray] and [KevinMarks] joined the channel
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[tantek] capjamesg, do you have opinions about rel="repository"? even minor bikeshed considerations like rel="repository" vs rel="repo"?
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capjamesg [tantek] I like rel=repository.
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capjamesg I prefer "repository" over "repo"
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[tantek] that's good enough for me
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[tantek] capjamesg, I think we should write up drafts for rel="code" and rel="repository"
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capjamesg I don't know how many times I have written "This project is open source". Having an explicit rel both feels valuable, and adds almost no effort on the publisher's side.
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[tantek] exactly that!
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[tantek] we can capture both such plain text content/link use-cases and the (popular a while ago?) little graphic diagonal banner in the corner of various pages that said "This project is on GitHub" or something similar
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[tantek] like screenshots thereof
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capjamesg I think that graphic was popular because some of the default GitHub Pages themes had it.
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capjamesg https://pages-themes.github.io/cayman/ has a "View on GitHub" button at the top.
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capjamesg [edit] https://pages-themes.github.io/cayman/ has a "View on GitHub" button at the top.
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[tantek] oh! that's even more of a good reason. imagine if we got rel=repository into those default themes!
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capjamesg Indeed!
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capjamesg I can write a draft of rel=repository.
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capjamesg One point of clarification. rel=repository on its own should be used to link to the root of a repository?
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[tantek] nope, if your link means "root" of a repository, then you must use both: rel="repository root"
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[tantek] (I copied from indieweb dev chat)
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[tantek] capjamesg, did you see my additional brainstorms I noted on the source-code-brainstorming page?
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[tantek] see https://microformats.org/wiki/source-code-brainstorming#Alternatives the second list after "2025+"
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capjamesg Yes, I did. I don't quite understand " just the (presumably revision control) repository file for the current page"
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capjamesg Can you give an example of what that file would be?
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capjamesg (and how it differs from a source-code file)
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[tantek] those are all the examples where a page on the web links directly to the file in github
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[tantek] instead of say, the *repo* in github or even the *folder* that the file is in
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capjamesg So you wouldn't use rel=repository on its own?
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[tantek] re: "differs from a source-code file" – examples of plain "view source code" (not on a repo): wikis that require login to edit instead show a "View source" link/button that when clicked shows you a textarea you can copy out of (but not edit). E.g. http://indieweb.org, http://microformats.org/wiki, http://wiki.mozilla.org
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[tantek] no you would, I gave the use-cases
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[tantek] quoting from https://microformats.org/wiki/source-code-brainstorming#Alternatives "rel=repository. … for just the (presumably revision control) repository file for the current page, without asserting a 'code' semantic"
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capjamesg Ah, I see now.
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capjamesg So you may use rel=repository on its own if a file is say markdown or txt but not code?
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[tantek] or image file etc. etc.
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[tantek] and in all those cases, since none of those files can have a hyperlink *inside*, the rel value must be conveyed by HTTP LINK header
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[tantek] where or not your markdown is "code" is in the eye of the markdown author 🙂
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[tantek] but yea, I expect any user visible/clickable in-page links with rel=repository to have at least one other value, e.g. at most one of "code", "directory", or "root"
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[tantek] if you are linking directly to the code file in the repo, then rel="repository code"
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[tantek] if you are linking to the folder that the code file is in in the repo, then rel="repository directory"
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[tantek] if you are linking to the top level of the repo that the code file is somewhere inside, then rel="repository root"
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[tantek] there are all different and mutually exclusive
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[tantek] hmm, maybe a PDF with a hyperlink to itself in a repo could have rel="repository"?
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[tantek] since PDFs do support hyperlinks I believe
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[tantek] capjamesg, this makes me think we need to start thinking about a rel value validator, perhaps an addition to http://indiewebify.me
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[tantek] because a lot of this can be automatically checked to see if the right rel values are being used or not
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capjamesg Indeed.
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capjamesg I implemented rel=edit in indieweb-utils in Python.
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[tantek] mmm!
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[KevinMarks] A validator is a nice idea
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capjamesg What would the validator do for this application?
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[tantek] It could detect if wrong combinations of rel values were being used with specific GitHub links
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[tantek] e.g. if someone links to a Github *directory* with rel=code, that's wrong.
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[tantek] or a repo with rel=code
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