Limiting Atom to one format

[Graham <dtcd@xxxxxxx>]

(Ken can add this to his list of issues)

On various recent threads Henri has been proposing Atom only allow 
XHTML over the wire - that all content be converted before it is put in 
a syndication feed, and that the publishing UA converts/validates user 
entry before transmission to the CMS. This doesn't sound like a good 
idea at all for a lot of reasons. I think it is important enough to 
deserve its own thread, as it represents a major paradigm shift (and 
removal of functionality) very late in the day. If you haven't posted 
an opinion on this topic, do so now.

Reasons against:
- Placing such a limitation in the core spec of a transport mechanism 
would be totally arbitrary, because otherwise the mechanisms are pretty 
much content-agnostic.
- Requiring a million web publishers to install Tidy (or more likely 
forget the whole Atom idea)
- Creating a very common use case where RSS does something Atom can't 
(wasn't the whole point to create a single syndication format?)

Reasons for:
- Easier parsing for some applications.

As I've said before, the net result of this will not be everyone 
suddenly publishing XHTML as some hope, but everyone outside XML 
circles suddenly becoming less enthusiastic about Atom.

Graham