Antone Roundy wrote:
On Dec 6, 2006, at 12:14 PM, Jan Algermissen wrote:
Following a link is not the same thing as subscribing to something.
The act of subscribing is a local activity performed by the user
agent. What you do when you follow the link to a feed is a GET. Your
agent then decides if subscribing to that resource is a good idea. To
make that decision, the agent has to look at the representation and
the it is insignificant overhead to see if the thing returnes <feed>
or <entry>.
...
Maybe I want to monitor a single media resource; an Atom media entry
would be an ideal thing to do so (I'd rather look at the meta data
than at the media resource upon each poll).
I'd say: stick with the one media type that is currently there -
there is no problem, just misconception about what it means to subscribe.
A few reasons why a user agent might want to be able to tell the
difference between a link to a feed and a link to an entry beforehand is
in order to:
1) be able to ignore the link to the entry (ie. not present it to the
user) if the user agent doesn't handle entry documents (rather than
presenting it as a "subscribe" link, only to have to say "sorry, it's
not a feed" after the user tries to subscribe).
2) be able to say "subscribe" to links to feeds, and "monitor" links to
entries (the user may not be interested in monitoring a single entry for
changes--if they can't tell that that's what the link is for, they may
end up needlessly doing so but think that they've added another feed to
their subscription list).
3) to open an entry in an editing app.
Datapoint: double clicking on an Atom Entry file in Ubuntu results in
the following:
[[[
The filename
"LE1100_1254262_1_4E760C4E-36D9-065D-7AF7-FB168427888D_1081337005687.xml"
indicates that this file is of type "XML document". The contents of the
file indicate that the file is of type "Draft journal entry". If you
open this file, the file might present a security risk to your system.
Do not open the file unless you created the file yourself, or received
the file from a trusted source. To open the file, rename the file to the
correct extension for "Draft journal entry", then open the file
normally. Alternatively, use the Open With menu to choose a specific
application for the file.
]]]
I believe this is because I had drivel installed at one point. Double
clicking on an Atom Feed document opens it in Firefox. I'm kind of
surprised by this, but thinking about it, you don't really write feeds,
but you do write entries.
cheers
Bill
