On 4/28/05, Roger B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Do you have an example? > > Robert: I'm an example. I also drop title-free feeds (see Scripting > News)... given the nature of the app, a feed without titles or content > is just worthless.
That's fine, but we're not here to tailor the format to your app. I've gotten feedback from embedded device developers complaining that XHTML requires them to do more parsing than their app can handle, for little practical benefit (for them). Note that we're also giving them the short end of the stick with this requirement. > That doesn't mean I have anything against content-free feeds for > specific applications. After all, as you pointed out, I produce some. > In fact, that's why I'm pro-SHOULD in this case; a weblog or wiki feed > (Atom's two primary targets) should contain some form of content. This is the assertion I have a problem with, and the opinions expressed by others echo my gripe. > But > if you know what you're doing, and have no other choice, then drop it > and cross your fingers. Well, now we're just back to the sorts of feeds that are supposedly perfectly ok on the condition that they contain an empty summary element. We seem to be forgetting that RSS feeds were initially for headlines and links alone. It's obvious that full-content feeds are much more popular now, but there is no definition of "syndication" or "RSS" in common use that precludes title-only feeds. > > What are the interoperability considerations that must be carefully > > weighed? > > Apps that expect content won't get any. I haven't checked things out > in a while, but once upon a time, Newsgator-in-Outlook would use the > item's link as the content for a content-free feed. Newzcrawler, > meanwhile, automatically forwards the user (via the integrated > browser) to the link. And as I've already mentioned, I'll drop the > items entirely. > > The publisher will therefore face unpredictable results relating to a > key part of aggregator functionality... that's definitely worthy of a > SHOULD. Publishers face unpredictable results in any case. We don't mandate that apps do anything with data they receive, so they are free to decide the summary is too short and showing the web page would be better (experiment with this in RSS Bandit). By default, Mozilla Thunderbird doesn't show RSS summaries or Atom content when they are present. Instead it behaves as NewzCrawler does in all cases. Robert Sayre
