Re: PaceIntrospection: Is another file format really needed?

[Beecher Greenman <millennium@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote:

> +1. Different purposes, different elements, models and constructs. 
> There's  no real point in reusing atom:feed and atom:entry if what we're 
> trying to  do with them is totally different from the element's original 
> purpose.
Except that introspection exactly fits the element's original purpose. I 
offer the following as proof:

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From the ConceptualModel article in the Wiki, at 
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/ConceptualModel:

feed, channel:
    Definition: A collection of resources in an order.

entry
    Definition: An entry is a metadata record of a published item, 
including an author, a link to the item in the context of the 
publisher's site, a publication date, and potentially the content of the 
item.

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From the RevisedConceptualModel article in the Wiki, at 
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/RevisedConceptualModel:

"We have a real chance here to make something that is supremely simple, 
totally trend-free, and unquestionably usable. It should be about 
simplicity, ground up design, and precise semantics. If it's not, then 
it'll just continue to be replaced, ever more confusingly, for users.

For example, an entry/article/document can be published many times in 
many locations, can be updated, and can go through numerous other 
processes. If entries became a much more general thing, independent of 
when they were published, that would be a helpful level of generalization. "

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From the WhatIsAnEntry article (to which you yourself contributed), at 
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/WhatIsAnEntry:

resource
    Definition: A resource can be anything that has identity. Familiar 
examples include an electronic document, an image, a service (e.g., 
"today's weather report for Los Angeles"), and a collection of other 
resources. Not all resources are network "retrievable"; e.g., human 
beings, corporations, and bound books in a library can also be 
considered resources. [WWW]RFC2396

feed, channel:
    Definition: A collection of resources updated day-to-day and 
appearing in chronological order.

entry, record
    Definition: An entry or record is some structured metadata about a 
resource, comprising one or more attributes and their associated values.

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My point is that this is exactly the sort of thing that the feed data 
model was originally intended to represent. The same is, of course, true 
for syndication, which is itself not much more than a specialized kind 
of introspection. If anything we should be doing "Introspection-based 
syndication", but it's too late for that; syndication is already 
defined, and introspection is not. We can, however, correct that error 
by using feed-based introspection; we are still early enough in this 
standard's specification that which one came first -syndication versus 
introspection- need not make much of a difference. But if we are going 
to correct this problem, we need to do it here and now, before we make 
the problem any worse.

- Beecher Greenman