Use of profile attribute in HTML head tag

Question

What is the use of profile attributes in the HTML tag?

I happened to read about it in here : http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_head.asp.

Answer 1

The actual HTML 4 specification as opposed to the background on name spaces in general explains it better. Check out: http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/global.html#profiles

One real life use is to make it clear that your meta-data is not just an arbitrary system by you, but adheres to a system some one came up with.

So for example, you may want to use the Dublin Core specification for your meta data. On a web page you would state this in the HEAD element using the profile attribute and then your meta tags would use Dublin Core elements like so: