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

On Feb 19, 2009, at 15:45, Sam Ruby wrote:

> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> 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.
>
> /me mutters "Monday Morning Quarterbacks"[1].


My point is not criticizing what happened after the fact for the sake  
of whining with hindsight. I was in it myself, and I even believed in  
Draconian error handling back then and was terrified by Mark's Liberal  
Parser.

My point is the Atom response to the flaws of RSS probably isn't a  
pattern that is good for emulation by other groups in the future as  
"the only way forward".

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

Received on Thursday, 19 February 2009 14:08:03 UTC