Re: MUST a collection be returned as an Atom feed?

[Joe Gregorio <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 1:16 PM, DeWitt Clinton <dewitt@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The one on my mind lately has been Webfinger
> (http://code.google.com/p/webfinger/).  The standard content type for
> /.well-known/host-meta/ queries and webfinger queries is XRD
> (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/35274/xrd-1.0-wd10.html).

The value of a protocol goes up with the ease of implementation, and
adding in options almost always makes an implementation harder.

In addition I don't understand the use of XRD, nor of using any XML format
for webfinger. To put this in context, if I were to start working on AtomPub
today, I would use JSON (for everything I couldn't figure out how to stuff into
headers). Where exactly is webfinger, that is, is it worth it for me to
give feedback at this time?

>  However, there seems to be both interest and value in returning these
> documents in other formats -- in particular JSON and HTML, though Atom
> entries are also a strong possibility if we can align XRD's link element a
> bit better -- hence the desire to perform some sort of content negotiation.
>  This can be implemented via a URL-modifying switch (i.e., a 'format' flag),
> such as I do at http://webfingerclient-dclinton.appspot.com/, but there's no
> reason the server shouldn't be able to infer the client's desired media type
> given enough hints in the request.
> Also, given the ever-increasing popularity of JSON as an alternative to XML,
> I suspect that many Atom-based servers would also like to offer a negotiated
> option of a JSON return format.  I know I'd like that for syndicated search
> results, for example.

IF a JSON based alternative to AtomPub were to be developed, I'm not sure
how conneg would help. How would having a different URI for the equivalent
of the service document hurt adoption? (I'm presuming it would be AtomPub-like
and have a service document or a collection document and that you just follow
links from there, at which point the URIs could be different for Atom and JSON
based representations, so conneg would only be needed on the the
very first resource you touched.)

   Thanks,
   -joe

> Sorry, this has strayed off topic -- I'll pick up this thread elsewhere if
> needed.
> -DeWitt