[/xref] "abstract-op" definitions misreported as "dfn"

[tabatkins]

Sorry, I'm reporting the bug with respec.org/xref here because there's no obvious place for bug reports linked from the webpage.

If you search for, say, https://respec.org/xref/?term=clear+cookies+for+origin, the website pulls up the definition and classifies it as "dfn". But in WebRef it's labeled as "abstract-op": https://github.com/w3c/webref/blob/main/ed/dfns/clear-site-data.json#L252. This caused a coworker some confusion today, as they tried to use a dfn autolink in Bikeshed for this and it failed to link.

I suspect you might have a hardcoded list of recognized definition types, and report "dfn" for anything you don't recognize? If so, it would be nice to remove that; the list of definition types might grow in the future, and the less places we have to update that, the better. (Ideally just WebRef and Bikeshed/ReSpec themselves.)

[sidvishnoi]

We did it intentionally, but not sure if it was the best way (speced/respec-web-services#202 (comment)). I'll see if we can keep them as separate without breaking existing specs. It's possible it might not break anymore thanks to https://github.com/w3c/respec/pull/4439.
(Sorry for late reply)

[tabatkins]

The current behavior is actively broken already, since it's telling people to write their autolink with a particular type which will not work. It looks like the ReSpec issue just decided to do the exact wrong thing, and I'm not sure why.