Hi Sean, first of all, thanks for responding. Now, to your points:
* Sean Lyndersay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-02-25 00:20]: >Giving the original format to the developer is of questionable >value since that makes the developer have to do all the work of >learning 4 different feed formats just to get the data they >need. I agree that for the common simple needs, it is helpful for developers to standardize on a single format. But why would you refuse the pristine input to developers who are willing to do extra work in order to get extra value out of the input? I don't see any reason not to offer both options; it's not an either/or question. >I'm sure that many people -- on this list in particular -- think >that the right thing to do is to normalize to Atom 1.0, instead. >Yep, that's certainly one way to think about it. But then I'd be >having this same discussion with Dave and with folks on >rss-public. :) Another way to look at this is that you are not actually normalising to RSS 2.0. The Atom model is a proper superset of the RSS 2.0 model, so anything that can be expressed in RSS 2.0 can also be expressed faithfully in Atom, whereas the reverse is not true and there is loss of fidelity. You overcome this by adding namespaced Atom elements to RSS 2.0; put plainly, you end up with a format that isn't RSS 2.0 so much as a funky Atom-in-RSS-2.0 thing. But when all is said and done, the names between the angle brackets don't matter much. My concern is rather that the benefits that the Atom model brings to the table, both in added capabilities as well as in rigor, be available to as many users as soon as possible. And to that end, the following: >In short, I'd rather avoid the issue altogether and provide some >value to the developers who are using the platform -- which >means preventing them from having to learn several different >formats to get common data, while allowing them to get access to >extensions. could be a great opportunity. But my question here is, how will the Atom extensions be documented? Do they constitute an integral part of the core normalized format? Or will they just be second-class citizen which developers will have to be individually persuaded to support? How much of the added capabilities will be available through the API? In a nutshell, how likely is it that developers aiming to do the simplest thing that can possibly work will support the full capabilities of Atom? Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
