* Bob Wyman [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-01-09 01:42-0500]
Tim Bray wrote:
2. We are close to RSS2 feature-compatibility, we either adopt
image enclosure or make a conscious decision not to.
There are other bits of RSS2 that should be seriously considered --
even if they aren't widely used. For instance, the RSS2 rating element
which contains a PICS[1] statement. As far as I know, virtually noone uses
the rating tag in RSS2.0. Nonetheless, it would probably be wise to
support such a thing in Atom. As blogging goes mainstream, we should be
able to show that mechanisms at least exist to do what PICS is attempting to
do...
I agree that it should be possible to do PICS-like stuff in RSS and Atom
feeds. I'm not sure you need a PICS tag in the core spec though. Various
folks in Europe and Japan (eg. ICRA, IAJapan) are looking into PICS-like
functionality in an RDF and XML environment, with use cases that go
somewhat beyond the classic filtering / 'child protection' scenarios
that dominate public perception of PICS. Historical aside, the original
name for RDF was PICS-NG, an effort which was merged with Guha and TimBray's
MCF-in-XML ideas. I'd argue that any PICS-ish functionality in 2005
can be accomplished using namespaces, and probably using
RDF/XML-oriented namespaces, and that PICS itself is a legacy that
doesn't need to be supported in the core Atom format. Of course if
there are folks out there who really want to produce and consume
PICS s-expression syntax in feeds, they can invent a namespace'd
construct that allows such embedding. There are actually a few things
PICS can do which XML and even RDF/OWL don't do well yet, in particular
the ability to write a content label with a rule that explains how
it applies to all documents that share a common base URI. But some of
are working on an XML/RDF-ization of this. Details hopefully to follow
soonish...
Dan
bob wyman
[1] http://www.w3.org/PICS/
