* James Aylett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-05-23 14:01+0100] > > On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 02:29:33PM +0200, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > > > * Robert Sayre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-05-23 13:40]: > > > What is the interop problem you are trying to avoid? You don't > > > just throw in a SHOULD NOT and say "otherwise it would be > > > hard". > > > > How else would you present a list of distinct authors for a set > > of entries? What is the point of allowing multiple atom:author > > elements, if not to require that each of them refer to only a > > single person (or entity) so that the data can be extracted > > precisely without resorting to fuzzy matching? I thought we???d > > gone over this. > > I think we're trying to do too much here. Why on earth are we > disallowing a list of authors that includes the same person twice? > Why does it actually cause problems? I can write the following English > sentence: > > "The book was written by James Aylett, James Aylett, and James > Aylett". > > I can do so meaning the /same/ James Aylett, using the repetition for > effect. Banning this in Atom doesn't actually seem to have any good > reason beyond a kind of technical tidying. Surely it's more useful to > have the semantics "if you list the same person twice, you mean it" > (leaving "mean it" to be a context of the feed; the feed description > could explain it, for instance).
It would be good if Atom were clear on whether repetition of the exact same name implies the two authors are distinct (eg. things written by father/son pairings, where they have same name). Dan
