PaceFeedIdOrSelf

[Antone Roundy <antone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/PaceFeedIdOrSelf

Note that this proposal makes alternate a SHOULD, not a MAY. This is to 
say that if you've got an alternate, you SHOULD link to it.  I don't 
particularly care whether that's SHOULD or MAY.

===============

Abstract

Require either a self link or an id as children of atom:feed elements. 
Don't require an alternate link.

Rationale

    * From PaceFeedIdOrAlternate: A number of use cases (e.g., 
[WWW]subversion change logs and [WWW]email attachments) have been 
defined in which there is no alternate html representation.
    * Lacking an atom:id, the self link is the most reliable data to 
use as an identifier for a feed, making it a better alternative to 
atom:id than an alternate link.
    *  Feeds may be the only type of internet resource that routinely 
have an alternate representation. While this convention arose naturally 
during the emergence of feed formats, no strong argument has been found 
for requiring this unique situation.

Proposal

In section 4.1.1 of atompub-format-06, change this:

    * atom:feed elements MUST contain at least one atom:link element 
with a relation of "alternate".

To this:

    * atom:feed elements SHOULD contain at least one atom:link element 
with a relation of "alternate".

And add this bullet point:

    * atom:feed elements that contain no child atom:id element MUST 
contain an atom:link element with a relation of "self".

Impacts

Tools which expect feed level links (such as [WWW]Bloglines) will need 
to be prepared for the absense of this information.