* Dan Brickley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-05-23 16:40]: > It would be good if Atom were clear on whether repetition of > the exact same name implies the two authors are distinct (eg. > things written by father/son pairings, where they have same > name).
Doesn’t seem to me like there should be any implication. Any user interface that presents a list of authors which contains identically named, but distinct authors will have to somehow disambiguate them in order to avoid confusing the user sooner or later. If a publisher wants to be certain of a particular interpretation he will need to make the elements distinct anyway. I was going to mention that there are two other elements in atom:author besides atom:name, but now that I think about it I’m not sure if two elements with identical content in the atom:name element but divergent information in the others can automatically be thought of as referring to different authors or not. I think it is intuitive and should be implied that they are different authors, though, even if they are different only in the sense that they refer to the same physical person acting in different roles. I suppose that in this way, a meaningful, though application-specific subset of the semantics offered by allowing atom:category in these elements would be implementable. Whatever it is, I don’t see a strong case for prescribing a any particular interpretation here. Regards, -- Aristotle
