This has been an experiment...
I've got lots of thoughts on why Atom is an improvement over RSS but
I am constantly amazed that people are able to continue making the claim
that Atom offers little that RSS doesn't already support. Certainly, Winer
and the Microsoft crowd make that claim regularly. I've often wondered why
people don't see the really important differences between these two. To a
certain extent, the answer comes in the replies I've received to my posting.
i.e. Not even those most familiar with Atom can present a decent list of
clear advantages -- even though they undoubtedly know them.
Yes, we all know the advantages of requiring unique atom:id values,
writing less ambiguous documentation, etc. However, I wonder why advances
like the following don't get more recognition (note: this is not a complete
list.)
1. Explicit support for xml:lang rather than the silly <language/>
tag of RSS V2.0.
2. Explicit support, in the core, for digital signatures and
encryption.
3. Atom Entry documents. Thus, support for the protocol as well as
for push delivery of Atom feeds via Atom over XMPP and other such protocols.
(i.e. Atom is designed to enable a push future rather than only working in
the legacy pull-only world of RSS)
4. Atom:source elements which provide robust support, in the core,
for attribution on entries that have been copied from one feed to another
and for preservation of important feed metadata in copied entries. Atom's
source element makes it a superior format for delivering search results, for
constructing feeds which aggregate entries from multiple sources, and for
push applications.
5. Support for XML content types rather than being limited to RSS's
HTML content type.
6. Explicit support for "remote content".
We all worked hard in getting these new capabilities and others like
them into Atom and properly defined. Why aren't these things given more
"press" and attention? They are significant improvements over RSS that will
have profound impact on our ability to build better applications for our
users.
bob wyman
