Many thanks Sylvain. Using Dublin Core surely can clarify the issue to
some extent, but what I'm trying to figure out is the exact meaning and
common practice (if any) for the elements defined by the Atom spec,
especially those compulsory ones, because this relates to how these
metadata are and can be used for.
1. atom:updated: I guess the atom:updated value is used to alert the
downstream application of the changes in the entry therefore prompt
appropriate actions. The nature of the change, whether it's a content
change or entry link change, is not specified.
2. atom:published: The spec says this is "associated with an event early
in the life cycle of the entry", while typically "be associated with the
initial creation or first availability of the resource". If the resource
(I think this refer to the web content?) is created or made available
before the atom:entry is created (which seems to be always the case for
google blog), then the resource dates can not be within the life cycle
of the entry, right?
3. If an entry x from feed A is aggregated into another feed B as entry
x', should the atom:updated, atom:published, atom:author,
atom:contributor, and other metadata of the entry x' be modified
accordingly or strictly copied over from x? Is there an implied or
expected behavior for an aggregator in this aspect? If just copied over,
how can the aggregating feed B alert its subscribers of the addition of
this new aggregated entry x'? By change the updated of the feed B I
guess, but then the updated datetime of the copied entry x' may be much
older than the other entries and a feed reader may have difficulty
noticing it. If changed accordingly, how do I know which version of the
source entry I'm aggregating if there are multiple versions of the entry
x, each with a different updated datetime? If the original entry x is
updated, should entry x' also be updated?
4. atom:author and atom:contributor of the feed: I guess this is to
convey information about some authoritative source of the feed, and used
to keep some lineage information, because the spec say the aggregators
should keep the authors of the originating feed. But if the aggregation
is chained, shouldn't I have multiple source element or just the
metadata about the ultimate source? The spec says entry can only have
zero or one source, so I guess it's only the ultimate source and the
lineage is somewhat lost.
Thanks,
Zhiwu Xie
Sylvain Hellegouarch wrote:
One idea could be to use DublinCore to make the distinction easier to
define.
- Sylvain
Zhiwu Xie a écrit :
Hi,
Just a question on the syntax of atom:author. Is it the author of the
content an entry refers to, or is it the one who posts the content to
a content management system therefore generates an atom entry? I
checked google blog and it seems the later is the case (snippet
below), but then earlier discussions seems to suggest the former,
e.g., multiple authors/contributors discussion.
The same question can be asked on all the other metadata, e.g.,
rights, updated, published, etc. A more general question is, what all
these entry metadata are about. The spec says they are all about the
feed or entry, but it's not immediately clear to me what does the
entry metadata are about, the XML element itself or the content an
entry points to. This has much different implications, e.g., if
atom:right says do not copy, does it mean this atom entry cannot be
aggregated by other Atom feed aggregator or the contents cannot be
distributed within the atom:content?
Thanks,
Zhiwu Xie
-----------------------
google blog snippet: The author of the content should be Matthew
Glotzbach, inferred from the content, but the entry author is set to
Karen.
<entry>
<id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10861780.post-4599612599595997166</id>
<published>2007-07-26T11:13:00.000-07:00</published>
<updated>2007-07-26T11:43:42.465-07:00</updated>
<title type="text">Earth to the Enterprise</title>
<content type="html">
<span class="byline-author">Posted by Matthew
Glotzbach, Product Management Director, Google
Enterprise</span><br /><br />...
</content>
...
<author>
<name>Karen</name>
</author>
</entry>
