RSS Profile Testbed

Monday, 21 July 2003

Back when we were exploring the possibity of a profile of RSS, I set up a wiki on the topic and promptly let it run wild, to see what would happen.

Although most people have moved on to other approaches since, there have been a few interesting things happening there, including the RssProfileTestbed, apparently started by Ken MacLeod.

This is the ground-up approach; rather than talking about how to make things interoperable, they’re showing how they aren’t. This is helpful in a couple of ways; it identifies areas of the specifications as well as implementations that need work, and, it shows where the community has reached consensus, as expressed by code.

It would be really great if that chart could get filled out some more, so that it can be used as input elsewhere.

2 Comments

BIll Kearney said:

A fortunate thing about tests like this is they help debunk some of the myths about interoperability and the excuses regarding effective change. All too often the canard of “it’ll break something” is waved about as if it were fact. The reality is most features of RSS aren’t even implemented in most readers. So changing, improving or clarifying things in the specs won’t actually do any harm. Glad to see contributions being made to the pages.

Thursday, July 24 2003 at 5:25 AM

Danny said:

Marvellous resource! (I was surprised too - I must have fallen for some of the misinformation).

How do you fancy having this stuff on your Wiki too :

http://www.ideagraph.net/aggregators/

I thought it would be a good idea, but of course haven’t had time to work on it since - a Wiki would be the perfect home so people could add their own details.

Friday, July 25 2003 at 11:19 AM

mark nottingham