On Sep 21, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Danny Ayers wrote:
On 9/12/05, Bob Wyman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I believe it doesn't make sense for us to add data-carrying
elements
to Atom other than atom:content or atom:summary. Atom provides a
definition
of a collection of entries and it provides the entry format. Frankly,
it
should stop there. The data payload should be carried in the content
element.
I believe the ability to include data outside the content is likely to
be useful, and may even be essential in some republishing scenarios
where additional metadata about the payload is required. But that's
not to say the transport-only view of Atom doesn't offer big
advantages in the Structured Blogging kind of scenario where the data
can be neatly packaged, relatively opaquely to the rest of the entry
data. (Atom as SOAP lite?)
I agree with Bob rather than Danny, except that I'd advocate making the
metadata part of the XHTML content. Using Atom as a rich envelope in
this way combines very well with the Microformat approach of retaining
structure in XHTML.
For the example of lists of information, given earlier, the XOXO
microformat is ideal, as it can degrade gracefully for all viewers.
Microformat aware viewers can extract the structure, HTML viewers can
display it in a clear human readable form, and even plain-text viewers
(assuming they have enough nous to strip stuff between <>) will have
the core content.
http://microformats.org
http://microformats.org/wiki/xoxo
