Re: more on the simplified feed format

[Seairth Jacobs <seairth@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Randy Charles Morin" wrote:

> I think your original suggestion was better. I don't think bandwidth is
> such an issue that we require such complexity. Also, it's not super
> simple, just simple. I like the super simple thing together with Ken's
> attribute in the HTML suggestion. This is the way RSS should have been.
> Atom did a great deed in revealing this.
>  

Actually, my suggestion *could* be simplified further by taking the etag 
back out.  This could be tested through traditional HTTP methods on the 
<entry> document itself.  This would leave you with the guid attribute, 
which isn't supposed to change.  The only down side I can think of is 
that you couldn't perform a conditional GET to determine if any of the 
entries themselves have changed.  On the other hand, the size of a feed 
would be so small, that this may not be much of an issue anyhow.

So, here is how it would work:

1) Fetch the feed.  Conditional GET can ge used to determine if any new 
entry documents have been added (or if the URL of an entry document has 
changed).
2) For each <entry> element, fetch the <entry> document.  Again, a 
conditional GET can be done on each entry to determine if it changes.  
Note that this should be tied to the guid, not the entry URL, since the 
URL could change.  That way, simply moving an entry would not cause the 
entry to be retrieved again.

Seairth