Martin Duerst wrote:
[I appologize that this comes late. I was ill last week.]
I'm also still not convinced about this one. It was introduced with a very good motivation, namely that it would increase the chance that namespaces would be used correctly. After the changes, what I understand is left is the following:
Everybody has to use an XHTML <div> in every atom <content> of type "XHTML", just to make sure that Sam (any others?) can realize his dream of "atom without namespace prefixes".
This is how I generate my Atom 0.3 feed, using the popular Movable Type program:
<content type="text/html"
mode="escaped"
xml:lang="en"
xml:base="<$MTBlogURL encode_xml="1"$>">
<$MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"$>
</content>I enter the "EntryBody" in an HTML form, by hand. Then, a Perl script runs through the template I excerpted above, and generates the feed. The template approach is neat, because it lets only slighty technical users modify their content with a lot of flexibility and power.
Is this a smart way to generate XML from a purely technical perspective? Probably not. Do you and Julian and Anne and Henri approve? Probably not. Will tools stop generating feeds this way in the forseeable future? Probably not.
My homepage is valid XHTML[0], as are lots of folks'. They are going to take their PHP, Perl, Python, JavaScript, and Visual Basic, and use the basic string functions of those languages to cobble together a feed. They are probably going to go with "XHTML" for ease. They are not going to get the namespace right at first, so they are going to add a div element around the outside. However, this is not going to reflect what's in MySQL.
Robert Sayre
[0] http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffranklinmint.fm
