On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 11:43:38AM -0400, Robert Sayre wrote: > We get to design our protocol, and we know the type of software that > will be consuming a large part of the traffic. All of that software > expects a feed-level link. There are use cases where that's awkward, > but I can't believe people want to put these out on the open > Internet without an alternate.
Depends what you mean by "the open Internet": what about password-protected web products? Also, there's an implication here that we don't care about making life hard for denizens of "the closed Internet", giving them the choice between abusing Atom and choosing something entirely different. I have yet to hear a reason to make alternate a MUST that is compelling. That existing software (which by definition can't be an IETF Atom client) expects a link to ... some kind of HTML ... doesn't cut it for me, not least because the current atom-syntax spec doesn't require a link to some kind of HTML at all anyway. At the end of the day, I don't think it's possible to make the question "is X an alternate version of Y" anything other than a subjective call. As such, I don't see the value of making it a MUST - forcing to export their opinions isn't /always/ the purpose of a blog format :-) James -- /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\ James Aylett xapian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] uncertaintydivision.org
