Re: IMPORTANT NOTICE: Migration from Mailing Lists to Discussion Forums

[Dave Warren]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Are you saying that the RSS mechanism provides a way for the client to
say "only send me stuff that is newer than $DATE"?  If so, then it does
sound like an implementation problem that the RSS source could improve.
   

RSS/feed data is just a file on a web server.  An RSS reader can ask the
web server if the file has changed since it last accessed it (using
If-Modified-Since and/or ETag headers). Any change no matter how small
will cause the entire file to be sent again.
 

In most cases it's a script of some sort, not a static file (at least 
for something like a forum) -- The last-modified date may not be 
available at all, which completely defeats caching.

It comes down to implementation, but this is, unfortunately, a very 
typical implementation.

--
When you're arguing with a fool, make sure he isn't doing the same thing.