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14.7 - LINK
This provides a means of describing the relationship between this document and other documents, and has the same attributes as the <A> element (see Section 5.2). A document can have multiple LINK elements. Typical uses are to indicate authorship, related indexes and glossaries, older or more recent versions etc. Another use is to indicate a stylesheet that contains the author's layout preferences, e.g. for headers and multi-columns displays. Links can also be used to indicate a static tree structure of documents with relationships such as "parent", "next" and "previous", e.g. <LINK HREF=URL REL="next">
The standard values for the REL attribute are (case insensitive):
- UseIndex
- The linked document can be used as an index for this document. There may be several such indexes. The TITLE attribute should be used to name each index, e.g. in menus and dialog boxes. This relationship implies the document is searchable, and the browser should provide a means for users to type in one or more keywords. The index may be a full text WAIS index or a conventional hypertext-based index.
- UseGlossary
- The linked document can be used to answer glossary queries for this document. Typically invoked by a double click on a word*1, or by drag selection, followed by clicking a menu item. There may be several such indexes. The TITLE attribute should be used to name each index, e.g. in menus and dialog boxes.
Contents
The linked document acts as a contents page for a number of related documents. The browser should make this available as a button on a toolbar or as an entry in a navigation menu. The TITLE attribute can be used to override the default "Contents" name.
Next
The linked document is next on a path of documents. Browsers should make this available as a button on a toolbar or as an entry in a navigation menu.
Previous
The linked document is the previous one to the current document on a path of documents. Browsers should make this available as a button on a toolbar or as an entry in a navigation menu.
Parent
The linked document is at the next level up in a hierarchy of documents. Browsers should make this available as a button on a toolbar or as an entry in a navigation menu. There may be several such parents. The TITLE attribute should be used to name each such document.
Bookmark
The URL specified by the HREF attribute is a bookmark, which is named by the TITLE attribute. Browsers should make these available as buttons on a toolbar or as entries in a navigation menu.
Made
Defines who is the "maker" of this document. The HREF attribute should give an appropriate URL e.g. "mailto:dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com". Browsers can use this to allow people to mail or post comments to the author of the document.
Help
Associates a help document with this node.
Sometimes it may be useful to specify a hypertext link separately from the text associated with the start of the link. For example a sidebar could be associated with a given paragraph as follows:
<LINK IDREF="z36" REL="Sidebar" HREF="sidebar.html">
The IDREF attribute localizes the link to an element in the current document with a specific identifier (as defined with the ID attribute). In the absence of the IDREF attribute, the link is associated with the current document as a whole.
Other suggestions for LINK currently lie outside this proposal, pending further work. In some cases, LINK elements may be implied by the context in which this document was reached. This is explained in Section 15.
HTML+ Discussion Document - November 8, 1993
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