> > On 12/5/06, James M Snell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Mark Baker wrote: >> > [snip] >> > Ok, but I don't see that this would necessitate a new media type. >> > It's just an entry without a feed. You'd use the same code path to >> > process that entry whether it were found in an entry or feed document, >> > right? >> > >> >> Not necessarily. Sure, it might be the same parser code, but not >> necessarily the same bit of code using the parser. Look at the way >> Firefox, IE7, Bloglines, Liferea, etc all handle (or don't handle) Entry >> documents versus Feed documents. The majority of applications that most >> frequently handle Atom Feed Documents have no idea how to deal with Atom >> Entry Documents and I would wager that most applications that understand >> how to process Atom Entry Documents and Atom Feed Documents typically >> don't fall into the same category as most feed readers. > > Isn't that just a case of people not implementing the whole spec > though? FWIW, if that practice is widespread, then I think the group > should consider deprecating entry documents. Minting a new media type > won't help. > > Or, are there applications which only process entry documents and not > feed documents? > > Mark.
Mark, Since the beginning you seem to solely focus on what feed readers do or don't do. Suggesting deprecating the entry document on the APP list is quite missing the point really. If people keep seeing Atom as a RSS alternative then there is a big communication failure from the Atom folks. Atom feeds are actually less worthy than Atom entries which should have been pushed even harder as the first class citizen within the RFC. The Atom entry element is the one carrying the information and is the one that needs a media-type on its own, or at least a way to mint that media-type to make it clear to UAs what they're dealing with. In fact I will be really interested to hearing from folks who write APP client extensions for Firefox, Opera or else. Certainly they will tell us that they don't care about Atom feeds as much as they do about Atom entries. The thing is that adding a new media-type now would not impact thoroughly current implementations if for instance we were to say that application/atom+xml is for Atom feed and application/atomentry+xml was newly introduced for Atom entry. I actually do not understand why people get so reluctant at it. - Sylvain
