RE: Google Sitemaps: Yet another "RSS" or site-metadata format and Atom "competitor"

["Bob Wyman" <bob@xxxxxxxx>]

Greg Stein wrote:
> It was not published "to muddy the waters". That implies a specific
> intent which was *definitely* not present.
	Please accept my apologies for what was poor writing. I can see how
you read my sentence as implying intent to muddy. It wasn't my intent,
however, to imply that. I should have written. "publishing this new format
*and* muddying the waters." My intent was to say that publishing the format
has the effect of muddying the waters. I wasn't trying to say that Google
was intentionally doing this.

> "proprietary" connotes closed.
	I'm using the older definition of proprietary which means simply
"not standard." I see nothing wrong with saying "open and proprietary"
format... I don't think one implies the exclusion of the other.

> How about this: you have a web site with 10 *million* URLs on it. 
> What format are you going to use? Is Atom appropriate at that scale?
	No. I don't think Atom would work well with 10 million URLs. At
least not as currently defined. I do think, however, that it would have been
useful to try to at least have a conversation about defining some subset of
Atom that would address the need. I think a result could have ended up
looking much like the Sitemap format but offered a smoother migration path
from Atom as we know it to the more terse format and the reverse.

	Please understand that I think that on-the-whole, the efforts by
Google to popularize the Sitemap process and "syndication" by non-blogs is
absolutely wonderful! I'm only grumbling about the formats... 

	bob wyman