Robert Sayre wrote:
>> Bob Wyman wrote:
>> As long as multiple instances/versions of an entry are permitted to
>> exist in a single atom document while sharing the same atom:id, the
>> current Atom document format provides a useable "archive format."
> This is clearly a non-starter for a syndication format, since ignoramus
> apps that don't keep a history will show more entries in a feed than ones
>that do. hmm...
So what? "Ignoramus apps" will do all sorts of things that don't
make sense. Why in the world would we define a new "<archive>" document type
simply because part of the world's population is of non-optimal
intelligence? If "ignoramus apps" display too many entries, users will
either shun them or pester their developers with demands that they fix the
bugs. The marketplace has many mechanisms to address this and similar
problems. We don't need to write spec text to address this issue. If
anything we should address the lack of a standard method for creating
atom:id's and we should create a requirement that atom:updated must be
changed on *every* update -- not just on the whim of the entry author...
It is all this informality and hand-waving around atom:id and
atom:updated that is the source of any trouble with using atom:feed as an
archive format. Given globally unique ids (atom:id) and version tags
(atom:updated) for entries, archiving would be trivial even for "ignoramus
apps".
bob wyman
