On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 14:48:48 -0800, Tim Bray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My findings: > - more than half have no category information at all > - of those that do, almost all are using dc:subject > - I saw exactly *one* instance of RSS's <category> element, in feeds > produced by Roller Thanks, I was wondering. > So... options are: > > 1. put in category somewhat as I proposed it, on the grounds that it's > been specified before and it's fairly clean > 2. don't put in category, on the grounds that it's not been deployed > 3. don't put in category but recommend the use of dc:subject Of these options I'd lean closest to 1. but advocate a little further exploration of what's needed. I like the idea, and <category> seems a reasonable name. I'd express the requirements as follows : whatever syntax is used it should include at least a URI for the scheme, a place for an identifier of the category within that scheme and a string for a human-readable label. It should be optional. It should be possible to use it at either feed or entry level. As you say, dc:subject is in use (which discounts 2.), but I also think this is something people would use more if it was reasonably well worked-out and standardised. I don't actually think dc:subject as it is currently used is tightly constrained enough for what's needed - it trades broad deployment for precision. Atom's element isn't likely to be used that much outside of Atom. I don't think RSS 2.0's approach is actually far off the mark, it is pretty simple and supplying the URI of the schema in use is a major plus for using alongside other (meta)data systems. But the slash syntax seems an awfully clunky approach in a syntax that has pretty natural support for ordered lists and hierarchies... [someone got shares in MicroParsers Inc..?] Putting the old RDF hat on, I reckon the SKOS work [1] will mean it shouldn't be too difficult to map to other systems/schemes as long as whatever Atom does is reasonably unambiguous. fyi, there's some other plain-XML prior art that is been used pointillistically in syndication at [2] and [3], and I reckon it might be worth seeing if there are any ideas that can be pinched from XTM [4]. Cheers, Danny. [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/thes/1.0/guide/ [2] http://matt.blogs.it/specs/ENT/1.0/ [3] http://www.xfml.org/spec/1.0.html [4] http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/ -- http://dannyayers.com
