It is hard to discuss the impacts without knowing what status we are
trying to achieve with this and any other proposed changes to Atom.
Are we planning on changing the Atom namespace?
Adding inheritable attributes seems like a breaking to change.
Existing compliant implementations will silently corrupt such feeds.
Example (incomplete):
<feed dir="rtl">
<title>rtl feed title</title>
<entry>
<title>this should be right to left</title>
</entry>
</feed>
If this feed is stored anywhere then, a) the undefined attribute may
get lost; and b) even if it doesn't, stateful implementations won't
know that they have to resolve each entry against it and store the
attribute with the entry data as well as the feed data.
Eg, if a later entry is posted to the same feed, and the feed polled
as:
<feed dir="ltr">
<title dir="rtl">rtl feed title</title>
<entry>
<title>this should be left right</title>
</entry>
</feed>
A stateful implementation needs to know that this implies a feed with
the latest feed metadata:
<feed dir="ltr">
<title dir="rtl">rtl feed title</title>
</feed>
and two entries:
<entry dir="rtl">
<title>this should be right to left</title>
</entry>
<entry dir="ltr">
<title>this should be left right</title>
</entry>
--
Dave
