On 26/4/05 10:34 PM, "Sam Ruby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am willing to concede that there are valid reasons in particular > circumstances to ignore the requirement for a summary. Are you willing > to concede that there are implications to such a decision that must be > understood and carefully weighed before chosing to omit a summary?
(I know this was addressed to Robert, but...) While I agree that the implications of a decision to omit a summary need to be understood and carefully weighed by the feed author, I don't believe that mandating the summary element actually achieves this. I would rather someone with a titles-only feed just not have a summary rather than them try to subvert the requirement of the spec by saying <summary/> or (worse, if it is required to be non-empty) <summary>some useless text just put here to appease the atom spec</summary> If someone omits a summary, it is either intentional or not. The spec can either mandate the summary or not (perhaps encouraging it via a SHOULD): A. If omission is unintentional and the spec mandates it, then a validator will pick the unintentional omission. B. If the omission is unintentional and the spec doesn't mandate it, then a validator could still optionally warn the user. C. If the omission is intentional and the spec doesn't mandate it, the feed author is free to just omit it (and turn off a warning a validator might provide) D. If the omission is intentional and the spec does mandate it, then the feed author will just subvert this requirement with an empty summary or one with useless text. BC seem more acceptable to me than AD (calendarial puns unintentional) James -- James Tauber http://jtauber.com/ journeyman of some http://jtauber.com/blog/
