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Re: The Atom API is just for blogs? Perception vs. reality


Hi Mark,

Very timely comments....

On Mar 29, 2004, at 9:48 PM, Mark Stanton wrote:
Firstly is Atom just for blogs? If so fine, that solves all my problems & we
can all get on with our lives. If not, then what is it for?

If the answer to this is general publishing or "completing the original
vision of the Web as a writable, collaborative medium" I would suggest that
some of the Atom material is misleading the general public. There is a
strong perception out there that Atom is just blog related - even the use of
simple words like "entry" might need to be rethought because of the implied
connection with blogging (perhaps "article" is more appropriate?).

I guess what I am saying is that if the plan here is for a tool that goes
beyond the world of blogs, you should probably be aware that there is
already a lot of misconception out there.

I agree with you, and recently made some suggested changes to the charter that reflect this:
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/IetfCharter

I think that the proper tack to take here is that we design Atom with blogs as a first-class use case, but shouldn't do anything to preclude other uses, or imply that its only for blogs. We should also suggest other use cases that have appropriate support.

I've also started looking at WebDAV & how it relates to the Atom project.
Everything I can find is fairly inconclusive to say the least. I have almost
no knowledge of WebDAV, but have gone over a few old posts on the list & the
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/WebDav page.

Should I just be looking at WebDAV or is Atom going to be solving some real
issues that currently exist in the WebDAV implementation? 

I think that WebDAV has a role to play; see my comment at the end of:
  http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/WebDav


--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/