Link attribute for actions

On Thu, 2010-07-01 at 13:19 -0400, Shaun McCance wrote:
> There would be no specific requirements for the content of
> the action attribute, but we'd recommend implementations to
> use things that look sort of like a URI, for consistency.
> Support for actions is entirely up to the discretion of
> implementations. I'd define the order as such:
> 
> 1) If there's an action attribute, and the implementation
>    understands it, it uses that.
> 2) Otherwise, if there's an xref attribute, and it points
>    to something the implementation understands, it uses that.
> 3) Otherwise, if there's an href attribute, that's used.
> 
> Here's some other things I could imagine the action attribute
> being used for:
> 
> * If there's a scripting framework present, it could be used
>   for "do it for me" links that can e.g. open preference
>   tools or click menu items.
> * It could be used to allow users to submit feedback, ratings,
>   or corrections on pages.
> * It could be used to interact with social media and presence
>   technologies, e.g. "Share this page".
> 
> And so on. All of these are "links" in the sense that they're
> things a user would click on to do something. But none of them
> are pages or external resources, strictly speaking.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> --
> Shaun

The "do it for me" sounds great and I'm sure would see a lot of use.
Definitely nice to have available.

As far as the others they sound cool too, I just wonder if they'll
actually be used all that much?

The install one, for example, makes me wonder about cases where the
package is already installed or not available, user isn't connected,
etc. I think seeing an error after clicking it is probably worse than
not having the option at all. But then I guess the specifics behind it
would need to be implemented by each distro?