Re: FYI: Making Atom Happen

[Kevin Marks <kevin@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday, December 2, 2003, at 02:29  PM, Randy Charles Morin wrote:

> http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2003/12/02.html#a1048
>  

Don is being daft. I explained how Atom can take over a while back:

http://epeus.blogspot.com/ 
2003_09_01_epeus_archive.html#106413708176077432

> Imagine I'm a developer who wants to write a tool that can read and  
> write to weblogs. I look into it and discover that there are multiple  
> conflicting versions of syndication formats, and multiple inconsistent  
> blog posting APIs.
> I have to pick which ones to start with, and implement multiple  
> parsers and an outer API to talk to the various blog types available.
>
> If Atom or Microsoft or RSS 2.0 or whomever wants to win converts in  
> the future they need to solve this problem for would-be adopters.  
> Here's how to do it (for clarity, I'm using Atom as the putative  
> protagonist, largely because I can then use  the pun 'Atomizer').
>
> Take Postel's law seriously.
>
> Implement a web service at atomizer.org that, presented with a feed  
> URI in arbitrary format, returns a usable feed in Atom format. (For  
> extra credit, provide an API in mainstream languages that does this  
> transparently when parsing fails).
>
> Implement another web service there that presents the atom API fro  
> arbitrary blog URI's. It bridges the Blogger, Userland, MT,  
> LiveJournal, etc. APIs transparently.
>
> Given such services, the choice should become obvious for all future  
> developers.
>
> Will any of these players pull this off? I don't know.