As I understand it, two Entries in draft-ietf-atompub-format-03 [1], can only be identified if they have the same id. Another way of saying this is that if two entries have the same id, then they are two different versions of the same Entry.
This leads me to wonder if I am correctly reading the following passages. In Section 5.8 it is stated that:
The "atom:published" element is a Date construct indicating an instant in time associated with an event early in the life cycle of the entry. Typically, atom:published will be associated with the initial creation or first availability of the resource.
My reading of this is that atom:published specifies the date of publication of the first version of the Entry to be published. Which is to say that it cannot change between versions of an Entry, ie. Entries with the same id.
The "atom:updated" element is a Date construct indicating the most recent instant in time when a change to the entry was made that the publisher wishes to bring to the attention of subscribers. For example, such changes might not include minor adjustments like spelling and grammatical corrections.
My reading of this then is that the atom:updated date is the publication time of the version of the entry in which the text appears. Ie. two Entry constructs with the same id can (and usually will) have different updated dates.
As I understand it we have the something along the lines of the following change from draft-ietf-atompub-format-01 [1]
atom:created -> not specified
atom:issued -> atom:published
atom:modified -> atom:updated
Henry Story
[1] http://ietf.levkowetz.com/drafts/atompub/format/
