Re: PaceSimpleContentType

[Greg Stein <gstein@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 09:27:33AM +1000, Eric Scheid wrote:
> On 7/6/04 5:42 AM, "Asbjørn Ulsberg" <asbjorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Sounds fair. And enough. I don't think we need anything else at this
> > moment. Let Atom be simple. But could we use the 'mode' attribute instead
> > of 'type' to not confuse it with MIME type?
> > 
> >  <content mode="xml" />
> >  <content mode="escaped-html" />
> 
> Is this assuming that there can't be text only feeds, and that everything
> should be pumped through a text-to-html filter before being placed into the
> feed? What if I have something, not a blog, that generates text-only
> content, which I want to make available, and I have something that is only
> interested in text-only content ... why must these two systems make a
> side-trip to en-htmlize and de-htmlize the content?

HTTP has a notion of a content type, and a content encoding. These are
specified by the (wait for it...) Content-Type and Content-Encoding
headers. Encodings are simply transformations that have been applied
to the base content (one or more, and ordered).

It seems that your "mode" is akin to the C-E concept from HTTP. It
seems advisable to run with the thought that way: there is an
underlying content-type (a standard MIME type), and then you have a
particular encoding for that content to enable its insertion into the
Atom document.

This would allow feed sources to specify their original content as
plain text, HTML, XML, or even a Word .doc file. And then there is
another bit which says how you jammed that thing into the feed.

Cheers,
-g