Paul Hoffman wrote:
> In specific, "a complete archive of all entries in a feed" is well
> taken care of by our current format; it's just not explicitly called
> "an archive". The fact that our IDs are unique over all time means an
> archive of all entries that were ever in the main feed is just a
> bigger feed; that will work exactly as an archive with no ambiguity
> of elements.
Although I can't find it specified in the current draft, there used
to be a rule that you weren't supposed to use the same atom:id more than
once in a single feed. (This rule is enforced by FeedValidator for Atom 0.3
documents... Sam? Mark?)
If the prohibition against having more than one entry in a single
feed document with the same atom:id is still in effect, (i.e. if you can't
have multiple versions of an entry in a single feed document) then you can't
use an Atom feed document to archive "all states or versions" of entries as
they have been published over time. You would only be able to archive, at
best, a single version of each entry (typically the last one published, I
think).
One alternative might to be provide an explicit relaxation of the
rules by saying that for at least archives, what must be unique is a
combined "key" constructed by concatenating atom:id + atom:modified.
bob wyman
