Re: PaceFeedEquivalence

[Joe Gregorio <joe.gregorio@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 13:56:17 -0700, Tim Bray <tim.bray@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yes.  If I have two pointers to feeds:
> 
> http://www.example.com:80/feed.atom
> http://www.Example.COM/feed.atom
> 
> I guarantee that some apps, in particular web spiders, are going to get
> very aggressive about schema-specific normalization and regard these as
> equivalent, and I don't see any reason to rule this out.  Norm?  -Tim

This example is not relevant for several reasons.

First, "Simple String Comparison" is the strictest form
of URI comparison that you can do. That is, 
as a means of determining if two atom:ids are the same
it is the strictest test possible. Your example, 
and all other ways of comparing URIs, will be looser than
"Simple String Comparison". And that means that no
matter how you compare the URIs in practice, you will
always find the ones that are the same. I believe that
would be plus for interoperability.

That is, if I am a producer and I produce two feeds
with the same entry in each but they 
have atom:ids of

   http://www.example.com:80/feed.atom

and

   http://www.Example.COM/feed.atom

respectively then as a producer I should not be suprised
if an aggregator treats them as different entries.

Second, the assertion about spiders is a bit 
odd, are you asserting there are spiders out 
there that know nothing of the Atom format
yet will try to determine the equivalence of 
'entries' based on atom:id? Or are you asserting 
there are spiders that will know of the Atom format 
and will knowingly ignore the specification?

    -joe

-- 
Joe Gregorio        http://bitworking.org