On 5-Jan-05, at 5:52 PM, Tim Bray wrote:
1) There has been some controversy as to the "arbitrary" restriction
of one enclosure per item in RSS. Should we duplicate that
restriction? If so, why?
Based on the discussion at http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/2004/12/21#a221 and http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/comments?u=reallySimpleSyndic&p=221&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reallysimplesyndication.com%2F2004%2F12%2F21%23a221 I'm inclined to agree, don't see much of a downside for Atom.
I would like to see Atom support multiple enclosures because I feel the 1 enclosure per item/entry is quite limiting when sending out separate files of related information. I like to use the email analogy when talking about enclosures. In the current implementation of RSS, you would be restricted to only adding one attachment per email. But say you have 4 baby photos that were taken during his/her first birthday. Now I have to send out 4 emails to the same person, the first one with a description and a photo, and 3 other emails with each other photo. In addition to being cumbersome, there is no good way to show that the photos all go together. With multiple enclosures I can group all that related information together.
Dave does bring up some good points about duplicating a lot of extra information inside the enclosure tag, but I feel that most data can be either inherited from the encasing item tag or is encased in the file's own metadata. An ID tag per file is all that would be needed to keep the files separate and distinct.
Because they see value in several files per item, Yahoo is now trying to extend RSS to support multiple enclosures. Should we not solve this need prior to having to tack on extra layers later?
[-----]
Ray Slakinski
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