Re: FYI: Making Atom Happen

[Dare Obasanjo <kpako@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Steve Jenson <sjenson@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 1) What does link mean? What does the link point to?
> The original
> content? Something the content is talking about?
> 2) What can description hold? Is it HTML? Is it
> single-encoded? Is it
> double-encoded?
> 3) What does description mean? Is is the content of
> the page that
> links points to or is it commentary on link?
> 4) What can title hold? HTML? Single Encoded? Double
> Encoded?
> 
> That's 4 giant problems with only 3 tags. And those
> are only the required tags.

None of these are giant problems. RSS Bandit answers
the questions as 

1.) It doesn't matter. 
2.) Single encoded HTML 
3.) It doesn't matter. 
4.) Text. 

No one has complained about any of these decisions and
I have hundreds of users. Now I thought you'd actually
point out some of the tough problems like how to deal
with relative links in content which I also haven't
gotten any complaints about how I've chosen to solve
that particular problem. 

> So much developer time has been wasted because these
> things are not clear.

Indeed. Time that could be saved if someone just wrote
them down instead of everyone having to rediscover
them on their own. 


> If I were to start putting xhtml, without escaping
> it, directly 
> into RSS's <description>, how many readers would
> throw 
> up? If the number is any, then re-using RSS, using
> backwards 
> compatibility as an apron to hide behind, is a dead
> end.

Use xhtml:body, a number of popular aggregators
support it including Newsgator, SharpReader and RSS
Bandit to name a few. 
 
> If I use explicit namespaces in my rss file (like 
> <rss:rss xmlns:rss="xxx">(stuff here)</rss:rss>),
> then there are readers 
> out there right now that will break even though
> aggregator authors are 
> supposed to  "know better". 
> I know this because I
> naively thought that 
> RSS was really XML and I had Blogger generate lots
> of feeds that 
> looked this way.

Badly coded clients are the fault of sloppy developers
not the spec. ATOM will not change this regardless of
how many MUSTs you put in the spec. 
 
> Those are bad readers, yes, but they aren't out of
> spec. That's my point.

I'm not sure what this statement means. The spec
doesn't call out that badly written aggregators are
bad? 

> 
> It seems to me that part of Atom is helping move
> real XML, and 
> not merely a format that looks like XML, forward in
> the syndication 
> space. Real XML in the syndication space is a huge
> win. A mish-mash 
> of kinda-maybe-mostly supported nonsense is
> seriously selling 
> ourselves short. I'm ready to move forward.

I don't see this. RSS is XML, ATOM is XML. RSS was
deceptively simple enough for some people to code
aggregators without using XML parsers, which is the
fault of the developers who made the incorrect
decisions not the spec. 

=====
THINGS TO DO IF I BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD #95
My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

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