I'd like to see a fair number of changes from the current draft, but
there are very few changes that I want badly enough, and have enough
hope of seeing approved to overshadow my desire to finish Atom 1.0
expeditiously. Here's what I'd like to see--small changes that
minimally deal with problems and don't close the door to extensions to
more comprehensively deal with them:
Multiple authors:
* Allow multiple atom:author elements per feed/entry
* Keep atom:contributor
* Leave "byline" or ordering of authors to an extension for those who
need it
Multiple instances of an entry in a feed document
* Allow it
* State that multiple entries originating in the same feed with the
same atom:id are instances of the same entry [yes, they're SUPPOSED to
be, even "REQUIRED" to be universally unique, but let's live in the
real world]
* Leave determination of whether entries originate in the same feed or
not as an exercise for the reader (I don't see us agreeing on a method
anytime in the near future)
Ordering of entry instances with the same atom:updated
* Leave it to an extension for those who need it
Then we check the document to make sure it accurately reflects the
decisions of the WG, and with that, let's ship it.
Then a bunch of things I certainly don't propose we debate or decide
now, but which sound like good ideas to me: we can all watch what
happens as we gain real life experience; blog about our unhappiness
with this or that if we so desire; keep our own individual lists of: a)
things we totally missed that need to be fixed, b) things we wish had
been done differently, but the WG voted down, and there are no new
arguments for (and therefore should be readdressed--but it's nice to
keep your own list of these to point to and say "see, the WG was wrong
and I was right"), and c) things we wish had been done differently, but
the WG voted down, however, there are new compelling arguments for; try
to solve problems using extensions; and after a while, if any
significant problems arise that really can't be solved by extensions,
get the WG back together to do a revision. At that point, I'd hope
that we could come up with a list of issues we'd like to have
addressed, decide which to fix, and then work till those are fixed
without bringing up a lot more along the way.
