Re: PaceReplaceLinkElement: Is link-ness relevant?

[Dare Obasanjo <kpako@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Graham <dtcd@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> As an aggregator developer, I'd like to declare I
> have no plans (or 
> desires) to do anything at all with unrecognised
> Link constructs, and 
> thus no desire to be able to pick them out easily.

+1 

Same here. Currently the link construct is a hack. If
the link element has a fixed list of rel values then
it is just a hack around having elements with distinct
names and make Atom appear simpler than it is to
newbies 'viewing source' on a feed. This hack leads to
a style of naming elements that is un-idiomatic for
XML vocabularies. 

If link has an open list of @rel values, it is pretty
useless for aggregators to do anything with it. Just
in the various Atom Paces and spec drafts there are
links that mean (i) this is a link to a human readable
document (ii) this is a link to code for processing
the content of a sibling element of this link element
(iii) this is a link to an image file which is the
logo for the producer of this feed (iv)here is an
image file that is an icon that can be used to
represent this feed in applications that display feeds
in a tree view (v) here is a URI that one can POST
Atom entries as a response to the content of one the
siblings of this link element (vi) here is a link to a
syndication feed containing comments in response to
the content of one of the siblings of the link element



Each one of the above scenarios will require a unique
code path if implemented in RSS Bandit. Besides the
initial code that grabs all elements named <link>
there will be no similarity to the how these elements
will be processed or how they will be presented to the
end user. 

Thus there is no generic code for processing links.
Link tag extensibility in Atom is an oxymoron. 



=====
THINGS TO DO IF I BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD #95
My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign!
http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/