Re: Feeds MUST have alternate links?

[Sam Ruby <rubys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:03:20 -0400, Norman Walsh <ndw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Why must I produce an alternate representation of the feed?
>
> I would like to repeat that question. I have no answer for it, at least. 
> I  will use Atom in _many_ scenarios where there aren't any alternative  
> representation for either the feed or the entries. Why should I have to  
> create an HTML page no one on the planet will request just to 
> accomodate  the specification?
>
> > I have a practical reason for asking. Someone asked me to produce a
> > feed for all the photographs on norman.walsh.name. I can do that, but
> > I'm not going to produce an HTML page that is an alternate
> > representation of that feed. I suppose I could, but I'd rather not and
> > I don't see why I should.
>
> +1.

Let me point out that the channel link element is required in every 
version of RSS from 0.91 to 1.0 to 2.0.

And as a co-author of the feedvalidator, I have seen a lot of broken 
feeds where people have either inadvertently or deliberately ignored the 
specification, but I don't recall ever seeing one where this element was 
not present.

http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-spec-0.91.html#channel
http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec#s5.3
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss#requiredChannelElements
http://feedvalidator.org/docs/error/MissingLink.html

- Sam Ruby