Re[4]: [syndication] RSS Modularization Demonstration

[iand@internetalchemy.org]

Dave,

Wednesday, June 28, 2000, 4:47:46 PM, you wrote:

> Maybe I don't understand what you're saying here, but did the full-week's
> worth of work I did resurrecting the RSS 0.91 spec go unnoticed on this
> list?
Not at all. It was valuable work and showed that there was life for
RSS after Netscape.

> I find the activity towards "modularization" to be dry and uninteresting.
> I'd like to see some new information float through RSS-space, asap. I
> believe that imperfect element names are fine, I am interested in getting
> new information to flow from writers to readers.

RSS has a very special place in the world of XML. Orginally conceived
as a way of building mini sitemaps, it evolved into what it is today -
a lightweight format for headline syndication.

Now some of us want to move RSS on again to encompass more types of
information than simple news headlines and to cater for the new uses
of RSS that have emerged over the last 12 months.

Modularisation is a simple way to keep backwards compatibility and yet
enable people with different needs for RSS to create extensions
without going through an extensive revision process for the whole RSS
spec.

Hopefully by building an extensible framework we're planning for the
future. In a year's time we'll still be able to point a newbie to a
simple core RSS spec and say "look how simple RSS is - you can write
it by hand and it takes no time at all to maintain". Then, as they
need more functionality they can read up on the necessary modules and
apply them as and when they need to.

Ideally I'd like to see several different proposals for RSS in this
forum. RSS Modularisation is the first concrete proposal. Let's have
the others so the real work can begin.


Regards,

Ian

-- 
http://InternetAlchemy.org