Re: [syndication] Rogue "&"

[Julian Bond <julian_bond@voidstar.com>]

In article <20011011152342.A2732@mnot.net>, Mark Nottingham
<mnot@mnot.net> writes
>Actually, I think it's a bigger problem; IIRC such documents aren't
>well-formed, meaning that any XML processors (not just validating
>procoessors) won't be able to deal with them out of the box.

Well a lot of RSS readers have been built out of simple string
manipulation with no awareness of XML at all. That's what I meant by
non-validating readers. 

Is Syndic8 an evangelism effort for XML as much as RSS? Is this a huge
programmer education effort?

When Netscape had an RSS validator, at least there was a very public
place to check your code, but even that was a bit hard to find. There
are RSS validators out there now, but I suspect that few of the people
writing RSS know about them. Is there a completely generic XML validator
on the web? I'm sure there is, but I've never heard of it. A quick
Google search confirms there are loads of them.

I think this might point up an important aspect of RSS. With most usage
of XML, the creator and the consumer are fairly tightly coupled. If the
XML is bad, the system doesn't work and you get immediate feedback. RSS
is more one-way. The consumer may never communicate with the creator, so
the creator has no feedback if the XML is bad.   

-- 
Julian Bond    email: julian_bond@voidstar.com
CV/Resume:         http://www.voidstar.com/cv/
WebLog:               http://www.voidstar.com/
HomeURL:      http://www.shockwav.demon.co.uk/ 
M: +44 (0)77 5907 2173  T: +44 (0)192 0412 433
ICQ:33679568 tag:So many words, so little time