The simple answer is that not everything I may want to reply too will
have an ID I can reference. Suppose that what I'm responding to is an
item in an RSS feed that does not contain a guid element? All I have to
go off of is the URL of the RSS feed or the RSS item's link element...
neither of which are actual ID's.
A. Pagaltzis wrote:
* James M Snell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-08-09 07:25]:
The second feed illustrates the two forms of the in-reply-to
element. The dereferenceable form uses the href attribute to
locate the entity being responded to.
I am still strongly -1 on making the ID optional. Why do you want
to do that?
What scenario exists wherein it would be *more* desirable to
provide *only* a dereferencable location but *not* an ID? When
would it be *wiser* to *rely* on a pointer to a resource which is
always in danger of voiding, irrecoverably breaking the
connection from a reply to its parent?
The ID is REQUIRED in Atom entries. Given this, is there any
*cost* to requiring its inclusion when specifying in-reply-to? I
can’t see any.
To me, making the option available seems like requiring content
producers to make a choice about something their consumers will
never benefit from but may sometimes be harmed by – while
burdening consumer implementors with an extra conditional to
implement support for a useless option, and possibly requiring
them to sometimes fetch representations over the network to even
decide how to thread things.
If you can give me just one example of a scenario where omitting
the ID is beneficial, I’ll concede the point. Otherwise, I
maintain that this is a mistake. Options have a cost. They should
not be provided just for the sake of having them.
And sorry that I keep bludgeoning you. :-) I hope you can see
that my arguments are sound – or show me that they’re not. (After
all, I was just as wrong during half the previous discussion…)
The nondereferenceable form uses a combination of a required id
attribute and an optional src attribute.
I’d really like this to include an atom:[EMAIL PROTECTED]'related']
pointing to the source to encourage its provision.
Regards,
