Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
When the spec says you SHOULD treat html content as if it were in a <DIV>, it adds a certain amount of unclarity as how such Atom feeds should be parsed. I'm asking merely to see if there's any consensus as to how it should be done. I have no control over the vast majority of feeds out there - telling me to use xml:base will make no difference, as I have no control over the feed in which I found a <base>.
Do you still have a copy of the feed you encountered that was using a base element? I'd be curious to see whether its links and images would fail to work if you didn't take that base into account? Because if that's the case, I'd recommend supporting it (i.e. the base element takes precedence over xml:base or however else the current base uri is determined).
In other words, do whatever it takes to get that particular feed to work. This obviously isn't a common scenario, and it's arguably not a valid feed, so whatever you do you can't be faulted. Unless you find more data suggesting this is a bad idea, it seems to me it would make sense to at least get your one known example to work.
MHO. Regards James
