The feedvalidator currently considers it an error to have a feed with
zero entry elements which doesn't have an author element at the feed
level. Am I missing something, or is that wrong?
4.1.1 says
o atom:feed elements MUST contain one or more atom:author elements,
unless all of the atom:feed element's child atom:entry elements
contain at least one atom:author element.
without mentioning the "all none of the zero atom:entry elements" case,
and 4.2.1 says
If an atom:entry element does not contain atom:author elements, then
the atom:author elements of the contained atom:source element are
considered to apply. In an Atom Feed Document, the atom:author
elements of the containing atom:feed element are considered to apply
to the entry if there are no atom:author elements in the locations
described above.
without saying anything about how atom:author at the entry level might
apply to a feed. Since in the case of atom:author coming from
atom:source, it doesn't (the author of a republished entry certainly
isn't the author of the feed metadata), I'd claim that an empty feed
shouldn't be required to have an author, since it's only needed for
inheritance down to an entry.
Phil Ringnalda
