On 14/10/2005, at 8:32 PM, James M Snell wrote:
1) Is it a closed or open set? If it's open (and I think 99% of
feeds are), what does "last" mean?
My answer would be: if "last" is used, it's a closed set; if "last"
is not used, it's an open set.
Can you walk me through a use case where this would be desirable?
E.g. what would the subscription URI be, would any of the entries be
updated, and how if so? In what scenario would having a closed set
feed be useful?
Separately, you say:
The "first" may not be relevant in the Feed history case but does
come into play when thinking about paged search results, sequences
of linked, non-incremental feeds, etc.
How? Can you give us a bit more flesh for the use case? Again, I'm
not saying it's bad, but I don't see how it's useful in a feed (as
opposed to a Web page).
2) What's the relationship between these feed documents and the
feed document that people subscribe to?
I think the subscription feed needs to be pinned to one end of
the set (which is what FH does now). Otherwise, it becomes
difficult to figure out whether you have the complete set or not
by polling.
I think this will be dependent on the context in which the link
rels are used. The "subscription" link rel you've suggested is a
good solution to this problem. Within any of the feeds in the set,
the "subscription" link rel would point to the feed that should be
subscribed to -- regardless of whether the subscription feed
appears at the start or end of the set.
What would the algorithm be for assuring that you have the complete
state of the feed, without necessitating traversal of the entire feed
every time?
Cheers,
--
Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
