Re: Re[4]: [syndication] RSS Modularization Demonstration

[Rael Dornfest <rael@oreilly.com>]

Howdy,

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Dave Winer wrote:

> Well, I disagree with your theory about how RSS began, and what it's purpose
> was (and is).

At least until now, the popular wisdom seems to be that ScriptingNews is
more suited to content syndication, while RSS is purposed for metadata
syndication -- predominantly news headlines, but finding ever more
applications in other spheres, thus the need to extend/enhance.

...

> So Ian and Rael and others, here's what I propose to do.
> 
> I'll watch what you come up with in the way of modules and if there are
> interesting ideas in there, I'll propose that we add them directly to RSS,
> without adding the complexity of namespaces. I'm guessing that this mostly
> meets your objective, is a fair compromise, if not, then we can fork.

This misses the point.  The idea is to allow the extension of RSS a)
without need of iterative rewrites of the core specification, b) without
need of consensus on each and every element, and c) without creating a
bloated RSS chock full of tags, the majority of which won't be used in any
given application.

In the four modules which have already been bandied about alone, there are
already 17+ new elements.

> You can go the namespaces route, make RSS into a fully buzzword compliant
> spec, and if you get support from content developers, then we'll probably
> all read that format as well as earlier formats and we'll have happiness. Or

It's a pity you categorize this as an attempt to make RSS buzzword
compliant.  I regard the work we're doing as laying the foundation for an 
RSS framework upon which to build.  Content developers want to syndicate
more than just headlines.  We've already seen the requests for RSS support
for categorization, aggregation, threading, discussion, job listings, and
so on.  We just can't anticipate the plethora of uses already in the minds
of content developers.  Nor can/should we revisit the core RSS
specification, repurpose tools and parsers, and go through these gyrations
each time a new use is found -- all time better spent writing amazing
applications.

> maybe we'll find that the ideas in the modules are what are really
> important, and not the modularization itself, and then we can have a simple
> spec, and leave the buzzword people to their gyrations, and keep RSS
> realllly simple.

People have spent more cycles coaxing meaningful data out of supposedly
"simple" flat data structures than they'd care to repeat.

...

Rael

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  Rael Dornfest                  rael@oreilly.com
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