Martin Duerst wrote:
At 01:51 05/01/26, Asbjïn Ulsberg wrote:
>
>On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:54:27 -0500, Sam Ruby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>
>>> 2. Why MUST a feed point to an alternate version. [...]
>>
>> I'm -1 on removing this restriction.
>
>I thought we came to a sort of consensus that the link should be optional.
>Or was that only for atom:entry? Anyway, I think both of them should be
>optional. That is, I disagree with you, Sam.
I agree with Asbjoern. Regards, Martin.
There is consensus that atom:link is not required for atom:entries which contain content. That consensus has been reflected in the most recent drafts. That is not the question referred to above.
There are now, by some counts, ten versions of formats that call themselves RSS. Every last one of then has a required channel/link. Every last one of them.
Relaxing a restriction requires consumers to handle more cases. My expectation is that given limited demand for this feature, the more likely scenario is that consumers will either produce unexpected results or outright fail for feeds without this data.
Because of this, I would like to request that there be a compelling use case be found which for feeds for which there can not be a atom:link defined. Note atom:link is defined as a URI. While most examples that we have seen use the HTTP scheme, this is not a requirement. Given that this is not a requirement, and given that existing RSS producers have come out in mass demanding that this restriction be lifted from RSS, I can only conclude that the burden seems rather low.
- Sam Ruby
