RE: more on the simplified feed format

[Ziv Caspi <zivca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Seairth Jacobs said:

|  <feed>
|      <entry etag="etag_value">
|         <link>entry_document_uri</link>
|         <id>guid of entry document</link>
|      </entry>
|  </feed>
|  
|  where @etag is optional.

Three comments:

1. Replace the use of @etag with that of <modified> which we already have. 
2. <link> is already defined in Atom to be a URL that points to some
human-readable representation of the entry. We'll need a new element type
(<linkToEntry>, <fullElement>, whatever) that would be defined to mean a URL
to a full entry in the Atom XML serialization format.
3. There's absolutely no reason to force producers to have their feed
structured in only a couple of ways (full feeds vs. linked feeds). The goal
should be to allow a feed resource to include any subset of metadata/content
that the feed producer feels comfortable with. Thus, an Atom feed resource
could include for each entry the id, linkToEntry, modified date, title,
abstract, and still provide full entry content (not just the content
itself!) in some retrievable URL that can be consumed by aggregators.

In this view, (which I might note has been suggested in the past), the entry
element carried by the feed resource is a subset of the information that the
producer has on the element itself. This is an excellent base for data
synchronization between one storage (the producer) and another (the
consumer's local cache).
 
Ziv Caspi
  cell: +972-53-668-751
    web: http://radio.weblogs.com/0106548/