* Bob Wyman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-01-09 01:42-0500] > > Tim Bray wrote: > > 2. We are close to RSS2 feature-compatibility, we either adopt > > image & enclosure or make a conscious decision not to. > There are other bits of RSS2 that should be seriously considered -- > even if they aren't widely used. For instance, the RSS2 <rating> element > which contains a PICS[1] statement. As far as I know, virtually noone uses > the <rating> tag in RSS2.0. Nonetheless, it would probably be wise to > support such a thing in Atom. As blogging goes "mainstream," we should be > able to show that mechanisms at least exist to do what PICS is attempting to > do...
I agree that it should be possible to do PICS-like stuff in RSS and Atom feeds. I'm not sure you need a PICS tag in the core spec though. Various folks in Europe and Japan (eg. ICRA, IAJapan) are looking into PICS-like functionality in an RDF and XML environment, with use cases that go somewhat beyond the classic filtering / 'child protection' scenarios that dominate public perception of PICS. Historical aside, the original name for RDF was PICS-NG, an effort which was merged with Guha and TimBray's MCF-in-XML ideas. I'd argue that any PICS-ish functionality in 2005 can be accomplished using namespaces, and probably using RDF/XML-oriented namespaces, and that PICS itself is a legacy that doesn't need to be supported in the core Atom format. Of course if there are folks out there who really want to produce and consume PICS s-expression syntax in feeds, they can invent a namespace'd construct that allows such embedding. There are actually a few things PICS can do which XML and even RDF/OWL don't do well yet, in particular the ability to write a content label with a rule that explains how it applies to all documents that share a common base URI. But some of are working on an XML/RDF-ization of this. Details hopefully to follow soonish... Dan > bob wyman > > [1] http://www.w3.org/PICS/ >
