--- Tim Bray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Atom as currently specified has the following
> advantages over RSS:
>
> 1. There's zero ambiguity about single and double
> escaping, you can use
> whichever suits your publication process better and
> not worry about
> silent data loss.
Given the recent clarification of the <description>
element by Dave Winer the only ambiguity left in RSS
is with titles. This isn't to say there are no issues
(the MSN Spaces team just hit this problem last week
where an escaped title showed up fine in RSS Bandit
but looked bad in another aggregator)
> 2. You can include binary chunks right there
> in-feed, base64 encoded.
Who actually wants this feature? People are already
complaining about RSS bandwidth costs now let alone
when feeds contain binary content that has been
bloated to twice or thrice its size by base64
encoding.
> 3. You get help for aggregate feeds using
> atom:origin
Sounds like the <source> element in RSS 2.0
> 4. You have a date, atom:updated, with
> cleanly-specified semantics
> ("publisher says something changed") that's
> *guaranteed to be there*
> per-entry
This is the first real new capability you've listed so
far.
> 5. It's in an XML namespace
So?
> 6. It's got a good accessibility story: you have to
> have an
> atom:summary if there's no src= or it's binary.
You can use <description> in RSS 2.0 and there's no
option for having just binary inline content.
> 7. You have clean semantics for linking to the entry
> this describes or
> the entry it's talking about.
Really? I thought that wasn't resolved yet.
> Personally, I think these are highly significant.
> But even if you
> disagreed, there are two other reasons why it would
> be good to get the
> Atom format spec finished:
I don't. Two minor features is not cause enough for
doubling the amount of widely used XML syndication
formats on the Web (Dave Winer's specs + RDF-based
specs + Atom 0.3 + Atom 1.0). This is from my
perspective as an aggregator author and as someone who
works for vendor of a hosted blogging solution (Note:
I'm not representing Microsoft on this list).
> 1. Atom has an official specification
> change-controlled by a
> highly-independent standards org, there is no
> suspicion that any vendor
> or individual is pulling the strings. This might
> not strike you as
> important, but I assure you that there are lots of
> people to whom it
> is.
Some of us are above personality squabbles when it
comes to deploying and implementing technologies. The
fact that Dave Winer is responsible for RSS 2.0 and
has flamed myself and my employer doesn't change the
fact that I and Microsoft have adopted it widely.
> 2. The atom format is one foundation of the Atom
> publishing protocol,
> and I guarantee that the world can *really* find a
> use for the
> protocol.
True. As redundant as the Atom syndication format is,
I think there is some value in the Atom API especially
with regards to security. Then again, I've toyed with
just seeing how hard it would be to get vendors of
blog posting tools to just support XML-RPC over HTTPS.
> Also as regards RSS2 and Atom, my take was that the
> things in RSS2 that
> aren't in Atom are widely-unimplemented and thus
> better omitted (that's
> how we got from SGML to XML). I thought <category>
> was widely-used,
> but I was wrong. Is there anything in RSS2 that we
> don't have but is
> in wide use?
Your mistake is thinking that stuff in the RSS 2.0
spec is all that RSS is about.
=====
THINGS TO DO IF I BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD #222
I reserve the right to execute any henchmen who appear to be a little too
intelligent, powerful, or devious. However if I do so, I will not at some
subsequent point shout "Why am I surrounded by these incompetent fools?!"
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