I think requiring either atom:id or atom:[EMAIL PROTECTED]"self"] would make more sense. It's entirely conceivable that multiple feeds might exist that claim to be alternates of the same resource--for example, a full content feed vs. a summary feed; a scraped feed vs. an official feed (...in which case, the scraped feed might be a copyright violation, but that's a separate matter); a feed of the tech news entries in a blog vs. a feed of the personal entries in the same blog; etc. Requiring id or self would ensure that consumers had a somewhat reliable value to use as an identifier for each feed. Alternate, on the other hand, may not be useful as an identifier, so it really doesn't fill the same space as id, and thus it doesn't make sense to me to use those two as alternatives for filling a feed requirement.
Antone
On Monday, April 4, 2005, at 09:01 AM, Sam Ruby wrote:
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/PaceFeedIdOrAlternate
Background: there seems to be some feeling that *something* should be required. Opinions vary from id should be a MUST to id is at best a MAY.
While there are use cases for feeds without alternate html representations, I've been concerned that they are such outliers that the would be mostly ignored by the predominant feed producers; with the inevitable result that such feeds would be poorly handled and would therefore reflect poorly on both the authors of such feeds and the feed format itself. As this issue keeps coming up, this concern is lessening for me.
Notes: this pace was written in such a way to minimize the amount of change to the existing document. It does not express a preference between the two elements. Upgrading one or both elements to a SHOULD would require a separate Pace. Upgrading the Self link to a SHOULD or MUST would require a separate Pace.
- Sam Ruby
