Re: [syndication] Re: eXtensible Content Syndication (the next step for OCS)

[Julian Bond <julian_bond@voidstar.com>]

In article <NCBBKFMJCLIMOBIGKFMJOEJPGHAA.ldodds@ingenta.com>, Leigh
Dodds <ldodds@ingenta.com> writes
>I'm not sure that I follow the requirements here. Many of the suggested
>formats just look like (more!) RSS variants + some additional features.

To re-iterate, maybe we need a few use cases to keep this real?

1) To make it easier for the cloud of aggregators to replicate among
themselves, the feeds they've discovered. This would help all
aggregators to hold and provide more complete lists of feeds.

1a) To replicate the existence of duplicates and dormant/dead feeds
among aggregators.

2) To allow a site with multiple feeds to produce a machine readable
file with details of those feeds and how to call them. And maybe lists
of dead or moved feeds.

3) To provide a storage format for distributing a list of feeds with the
install image of a client side aggregator.

Any others?

The point being that this is meta-data about multiple feeds, not about
the items within a single feed. Now this could be implemented as an
alternate format of RSS where for <item> read <feed>. Or it could be a
new format. 

I get the feeling that this pattern is going to get repeated many times
for different standards. First we get the standard to describe the data
or service, then we get the meta-standard to list instances of the
standard. The first is used by implementations. The second is used by
index/search sites.
 
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Julian Bond    email: julian_bond@voidstar.com
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