* John Panzer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-10-13 19:40]:
> Well, you can pass them around by reference with [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I think.

By the letter of the spec, but not by the spirit.

But that’s beside the point, since if you’re going to point to an
external resource, you can and should use an enclosure for the
purpose, which has no restrictions on the content anyway.

The reasoning of the restriction regarding atom:content is to
avoid burdening Atom processors with having to decode MIME
envelopes. It wouldn’t make any sense to apply that only to
inline payloads, but not to remote content, since they are
semantically identical. So by spirit, the spec does not.

By letter, it doesn’t forbid it, because the type of
representation returned by the server when retrieveing remote
content is not realistically enforcable. Thus, the rules are

• If @src is present, then @type SHOULD also be.
• But @type MUST NOT be a composite type. Ever.
• However in the presence of @src, @type is only a hint.

That means you can omit the @type (and get complaints) or just
outright lie about it (and people will have to deal). In either
case, though, the consumer’s behaviour upon processing your feed
is undefined, so you don’t gain anything.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>

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