Re: ISSUE-4: Versioning, namespace URIs and MIME types

On Feb 19, 2009, at 13:56, Anne van Kesteren wrote:

> On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:40:07 +0100, Sam Ruby  
> <rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote:
>> This problem is way worse with title, there the specs and consumers  
>> (mostly) agree that it is plain text, yet the producers (mostly)  
>> agree that it is entity encoded HTML.  That's why you might see  
>> things like AT&amp;T in headlines.
>>
>> The only way forward in situations like this is to start over with  
>> a new format.  People will never stop using RSS, but people who  
>> have a need for the problems that Atom fixes will migrate.  And  
>> consumers will support both.
>
> I think RSS5 could have worked actually given that consumers  
> presumably have some interoperability or can get aligned because of  
> the feeds already deployed. It was mostly for political reasons that  
> such an approach was abandoned though presumably also because it's  
> less hassle to simply start over and leave the mess to implementors.  
> (See also design motivations for e.g. XForms.)


FWIW, I agree. In retrospect, I think we should have done RSS5 despite  
the objections of the steward of RSS. Having Atom didn't help feed  
consumer apps that still need to sort out the RSS <title> disaster  
when RSS is served to them.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/