Re: Don't bake discrimination into the Atom core (was Re: Low-hanging fruit: multipart/alternative)

[Mark Pilgrim <pilgrim@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:36:38 -0400, Graham <dtcd@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Mark Pilgrim wrote:
> 
> > The current design allows inaccessible content *and* accessible
> > alternatives.  Tim is recommending removing multipart/alternative but
> > *not* simplifying the content model.  This would leave the spec in a
> > state that publishers with a way to publish inaccessible content, but
> > no way to publish accessible alternatives, which is unacceptable.
> 
> <title>? <summary>? Can't the accessible content go in there? Summary
> especially seems like a good place for, say, a textual description of a
> picture or movie - it might even be the right place as well. Granted,
> inaccessible content can be placed in all three, but saying there's no
> place for alternate content is an outright lie.

That's not what title or summary are for.  Specifically, <title> "is a
Content construct that conveys a human-readable title for the entry." 
This is not the place for accessible alternate content.

<summary> "is a Content construct that conveys a short summary,
abstract or excerpt of the entry."  This is not the place for
accessible alternate content either.

I'm shocked, shocked that you, an aggregator developer of some note,
should recommend overloading core elements with different meanings. 
Didn't you complain about that wrt. some other format?  My memory is
fuzzy.  Or maybe it's all the outright lying I've been doing.  It
tends to get in the way of productive discussion.

-- 
Cheers,
-Mark