On 22/11/06 11:22 AM, "James M Snell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My preference would be to maintain the de facto standard that is already > in use by countless sites. I'm just as annoyed as you are about the > ambiguity in the mime type but in this case I think what's currently > deployed trumps what's technically correct. That's like saying candles and oil lamps trump Mr. Edison's delightful invention. Sure, when he came up with the idea there were not many adopters, but just look around today. Maybe a robust de facto standard will arise. Or maybe a hodge-podge of incompatible almost-solutions get deployed. How many varieties of (e.g.) RSS are there again? We're in a good position, in this WG, to suggest a future standard. We've delved deeply into the intricacies, we've examined a wide range of use cases. Speaking of which ... there's another use case to consider. Since Atom has promoted interest in using feed documents in an archival manner, it is entirely reasonable to use @rel="alternate" to point to an archive feed document which contains the *same* content as the referring page, as opposed to referring to a feed document which has the "most recent" additions from the same source as where the contents of the current page came from. (what a mouthful!) The archival feed document is truly the "alternate" for the html page "entries of october 2006", while the subscription feed document for the same source (and containing entries mostly from November 2006) would be the "feed" document. Sure, when it comes to turning back the tide to *deprecate* the use of @rel=alternate for subscription feeds in lieu of archival feed documents, I'm fully in agreement that current practice trumps that idea. The other idea though of using "feed" to indicate the resource one would subscribe to so as to be _fed_ more of the same content ... that doesn't conflict with current practice and we can lay the ground work for future adoption. e.
