A very productive discussion of an RSS profile has continued throughout the weekend and into this morning. Enthusiastically many have dived in – myself included. I still maintain that an important consideration has not been discussed and needs to. What are our design goals with this profile? (More specifically questions like the one I raised in my previous post, at what point does the specification stop and extensible modules begin?) This is a bit of concern to me. I don't think there is clear picture even if a certainly level of consensus is apparent in specific decisions. I'm am not so stuck on a specific set of constraints as much as I am purposeful and consistent decision making.
I think some discussion and clarity on this would be productive in further this discussion and its results.
Ben Trott has posted his thoughts on the issue of context in which an RSS profile should be developed laying out some of the type of information that needs to be considered.
The following is something in between that I putting out there as a conversation starter. Its loosely based on the design goals I set in the XSS profile I proposed last fall. I think they also coincide with what has been discussed thus far. Comments are welcome. Please use Sam's weblog here.
[UPDATE: Sam has opened a new thread on my post. I have modified the link above accordingly.]
Balance ease of use and authoring with ease of consumption by applications while maintaining the richness necessary to extended and adapt to various weblogging tools[1] and beyond. (In short, simplify and clarify what we have and how to extend and evolve it.)
Promotes best practices of emitting well-formed and useful RSS feeds.
Design around a simple common core of elements (title, link, description, channel, item) that may be extended with namespaces and modules.
The profile opts for namespaced elements in modules over tags in the default namespace. (i.e dc:date over pubDate. dc:subject over category etc.)
Design to maximize backward compatibility with the RSS 0.91 format and its descendents though some discontinuities maybe be unavoidable in achieving long-term benefit. This allows the profile to leverage the existing install base of 0.91 feeds and prior bodies of work such as Dublin Core meta data and RSS 1.0 modules.
[1] I understand what Ben is getting at when he writes as soon as we start discussing a core profile for RSS, we need to define the context in which that profile applies.
I'm not sure if Weblogging is the correct term to apply to the context at hand. It seems that this profile would be quite applicable to other domains like traditional
online news sites and publications such as CNet, the BCC and so on. Just a thought.
<p>A very productive discussion of an RSS profile has continued throughout the weekend and into this morning. Enthusiastically many have dived in – myself included. I still maintain that an important consideration has not been discussed and needs to. What are our design goals with this profile? (More specifically questions like the one I raised in my previous post, at what point does the specification stop and extensible modules begin?) This is a bit of concern to me. I don't think there is clear picture even if a certainly level of consensus is apparent in specific decisions. I'm am not so stuck on a specific set of constraints as much as I am purposeful and consistent decision making. </p>
<p>I think some discussion and clarity on this would be productive in further this discussion and its results.</p>
<p>Ben Trott has posted his <a href="">thoughts on the issue of context in which an RSS profile</a> should be developed laying out some of the type of information that needs to be considered. </p>
<p>The following is something in between that I putting out there as a conversation starter. Its loosely based on the design goals I set in the <a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/archives/000126.html">XSS profile</a> I proposed last fall. I think they also coincide with what has been discussed thus far. Comments are welcome. Please use Sam's weblog <a href="http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/1403.html">here</a>.</p>
<p>[UPDATE: Sam has opened a new thread on my post. I have modified the link above accordingly.]<br />Balance ease of use and authoring with ease of consumption by applications while maintaining the richness necessary to extended and adapt to various weblogging tools[1] and beyond. (In short, simplify and clarify what we have and how to extend and evolve it.)<br />Promotes best practices of emitting well-formed and useful RSS feeds.<br />Design around a simple common core of elements (title, link, description, channel, item) that may be extended with namespaces and modules. <br />The profile opts for namespaced elements in modules over tags in the default namespace. (i.e dc:date over pubDate. dc:subject over category etc.) <br />Design to maximize backward compatibility with the RSS 0.91 format and its descendents though some discontinuities maybe be unavoidable in achieving long-term benefit. This allows the profile to leverage the existing install base of 0.91 feeds and prior bodies of work such as Dublin Core meta data and RSS 1.0 modules.</p>
<p>[1] I understand what Ben is getting at when <a href="http://www.sixapart.com/log/2003/05/a_proposal_rss_.shtml">he writes</a> <q>as soon as we start discussing a core profile for RSS, we need to define the context in which that profile applies.</q> I'm not sure if Weblogging is the correct term to apply to the context at hand. It seems that this profile would be quite applicable to other domains like <q>traditional</q> online news sites and publications such as CNet, the BCC and so on. Just a thought.</p>
