BB> I just wonder why its never been placed in the 
BB> standards.

JH> Well, I think the main reason might be, this link type
JH> only has something to do with graphical browsers;
JH> text-only browsers, or speech browsers - will simply
JH> ignore it... most other link types are usefull for all
JH> browsers, except for the stylesheet, and (arguable)
JH> Alternate 

I think a major reason is that HTML 4.0 became a 
standard in 1997 and Internet Explorer 5 didn't come
out with this feature until 1999.

Stylesheets aren't only for graphical browsers. CSS2
has many properties for speech browsers, like
'volume', 'pause-before', 'pause-after', 'speech-rate',
'voice-family', 'stress', and 'speak-punctuation'. 
Teletype browsers could use properties like 'color'
or 'text-decoration: underline' and so forth if they 
were designed to.

Lynx uses 'alternate' links. It presents them with other
navigation links in a special list at the top of a page.