profile Attribute

Where to use the profile Attribute

• As Type URIs:
  profile is declared on the element: head

Description

The profile attribute is used on the head element to specify the metadata profile location(s) for the document. This attribute is not widely used.

Each applicable profile is specified by a URI, which may be interpreted by the user agent either as a string (which is treated as a globally unique name for the profile) or as a link (the URI is dereferenced and the resource at that URI used to provide profile information). The format of the metadata profile (i.e. the resource at this URI) is not specified, but such profiles should contain definitions for each meta property (a meta property's name is specified by the meta element's name attribute and its value by the content attribute) along with a set of legal values for the property to take (if applicable). Definitions for scheme attribute values and additional LinkTypes should also be given in a profile.

The lack of a defined structure for such profiles has led to candidate formats being proposed from outside the W3C - notably, Tantek Çelik's *XHTML Meta Data Profiles (XMDP), although this format does not appear to contain provision for scheme definitions. I have used this simple XMDP format to create my own XMDP for this site.

Perhaps the most famous metadata profile is *Dublin Core - see *Using Dublin Core for detailed information.

Note: Within the *XHTML 1.1 Structure Module DTD itself, the profile attribute is declared as having type URI, but since the *prose documentation for the Structure Module instead gives the type as URIs - i.e. a space-separated list of URIs - this is the type assigned to this attribute in this reference. Note, however, that (according to HTML 4.01, at least) only the first listed profile URI is deemed significant (ref: *HTML 4.01 profile attribute) and using only one profile URI is probably recommended until the W3C clarify their specification.