Using the <link> tag for navigation

I was wondering lately…

WordPress generates quite some link tags for archives and syndication, but why can’t it do the same for next/previous posts when viewing individual posts or next/previous lists of posts when viewing more at a time? The template tags provide means to place links on a page using a tags, but why can’t it do a similar thing for link tags?

Firefox has the link toolbar, opera has similar functionality built-in. The idea is that the link elements indicate the way pages on a site relate to each other so that a UA can provide navigation buttons in its GUI. On a blog, having link elements pointing to the next/previous (set of) post(s) could allow users of UAs that support it to click the buttons in their UA’s GUI to browse through posts. Even better, these UAs have keyboard shortcuts for these buttons so that a user can arrive on a blog he’s never been before and can quickly browse through it without having to touch his mouse.

I’d like to see this implemented, if I have the time for it (and feel like it 😉 ) I may try to brew a plugin that does this…