Re: Atom extensibility, RDF, and GRDDL

[Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 10:13:57 -0800, Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On Jan 8, 2005, at 8:23 AM, Bill de hÓra wrote:
> 
> > My answer to this question is that Atom doesn't have a model in terms
> > of being able to talk about extension so there's no point discussing
> > it. Extensibility is probably out of scope for the format.
> 
> I'm not going to let that go unchallenged.  The ability to put your own
> markup in a feed entry and be confident that it will not cause
> receiving software to break, and that it will be there for receiving
> software that actually knows how to deal with it, is what many people
> describe using the word "extensibility".  I think that Atom is, in a
> popular usage of the term (a large majority usage, I'd bet, but without
> backing statistics) extensible.

FOLDOC [1] has:
[[
extensible
<programming> Said of a system (e.g., program, file format,
programming language, protocol, etc.) designed to easily allow the
addition of new features at a later date, e.g. through the use of
hooks, an API or plug-ins.
]]
Unless XML and XML accessories have mangled the English language
totally beyond recognition, that seems a reasonable definition.

> The people who insist that you have to have to buy into a
> graph-theoretical KR model to be able to use the word "extensible" live
> in a universe that is self-consistent, but it's not the one where I
> work. -Tim

Nor I. 
(I presume anyway - I've never encountered any of those people).

Cheers,
Danny.


[1] http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=extensible&action=Search

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