Nikunj R. Mehta wrote:
Recent discussions on the atom-syntax mailing list has revealed interest
in creating a new WG to look at several extensions of Atom. Here are
several extensions that have been discussed:
1. Hierarchy operations including meta-publishing
2. In-line representation
3. Bi-directional text
Please respond to this email if you are interested in helping to explore
a new WG further. Please also identify if you have a specific interest
area to consider for a potential new Atom WG.
I am particularly interested in the in-line representation part of this.
I'm currently working with a small group on an Atom extension for
describing activity streams[1], and frequently we've received feedback
from implementors that they want the pertinent content to be inline in
the feed to avoid additional fetches.
-----------------
We were in fact discussing recently the use of inlining atom:link
content to refer to external resources without necessarily requiring an
additional fetch. I think this model is similar to atom:source in that
it provides some non-authoritative metadata that may be sufficient for
display purposes while providing a mechanism for processors to retrieve
the authoritative metadata when necessary.
The model we were considering was as follows:
<link rel="related" type="application/atom+xml" href="...">
<entry>
<id>tag:example.com,2009:123545</id>
<title>Some Related Entry</title>
...
</entry>
</link>
To my mind, the model here would be that if type="application/atom+xml"
then the link element MAY contain exactly one atom:entry or atom:feed
element which provides a subset of the information from the target
document, much as atom:source does. Other extension elements may be
added as siblings of the nested atom:entry element to allow extension
specifications to still add additional elements here without altering
the meaning of the inlining.
(the rel="related" here is arbitrary; this would ideally apply to all
links of type application/atom+xml, regardless of which rel keyword is
used.)
[1] http://activitystrea.ms/
