Joe, Thanks for your comments on my comments ;-)
>> While we could create a whole series of "entry", >> "generic", and other types, it might be better to >> consider listing for each collection, the acceptable >> Content-Types. >> > >This document is just the 'basic' protocol, where we are describing >the basic mechanisms and collection types. We are >expecting to produce >a further specification that covers editing >collections of other types >of documents, such as templates, etc. In the current specification draft (04), it looks like the "entry" and "generic" both specify identical actions (in the table showing Body/No body versus GET/PUT/DELETE/POST. So the real difference between the two is in the Content-types that each can handle: "generic" is unspecified, while "entry" is only defined as "application/atom+xml" or "application/soap+xml". In addition, the PROTOCOL specifies which ATOM elements are Roundtrip. The advantage of specifying Content-Types as opposed to contents attribute of "entry" and "generic" (and further definitions): 1) immediately gain the ability of the client to discern acceptable Content-Types, something sorely missing from the current specification. 2) immediately gain the advantage of the client being able to determine if it can "talk" to the ATOM URI. (Graphic applications can "talk" to ATOM APP that accept "image/*", audio applications="audio/*", etc) 3) Do not have to amend a specification (or create a new one) in order to handle every single Content-Type. 4) Adding different Content-Types to the allowable formats immediately opens the specification to a wide range of fairly obvious uses in the podcasting, videocasting, *casting. And even in corporate use, building in the parsing of Content-Types makes available any kind of syndicated content whatsoever using the same tools built around the APP specification. The current use of "contents" attribute still may have its place (in resolving duplicate Content-Type applications such as application/atom+xml templates vs. application/atom+xml entries -- but I'm not fully convinced of this example, however, there may be others). And then to cover the other specification listed under contents="entry": you could specify that all application/atom+xml entries provide Roundtrip atom:updated and atom:id elements. I don't *think* that this would adversly impact other uses of atom or APP. Again, just thoughts that I'm happy to debate. I don't want to step on anyone's toes here. Greg Smith Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html