RE: [syndication] RSS 0.91 - skips & optional stuff

["David Galbraith" <david@moreover.com>]

My main issue is that RSS is very powerful if individual items as opposed to
channels contain all the metadata of the item.

If we output a channel say Gnutella news from stories which are aggregated
by Moreover from many sources:

 <item>
  <title>InfraSearch New Search Engine Tech</title>
  <link>http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r7497631</link>
  <description>ResearchBuzz Jun 8 2000 1:52AM ET</description>
  </item>

The original publication source and publication time are at the moment both
inserted into the description tag. The problem arises because we as the
aggregator are creating the RSS channel and based on a topic not on a
source.

 <item>
  <title>InfraSearch New Search Engine Tech</title>
  <link>http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r7497631</link>
  <source>Research Buzz</source>
  <source_link>http://www.researchbuzz.com</source_link>
  <time>Jun 8 2000 1:52AM ET</time>
  <type>news headline</type>
  </item>

Although we could and do use the description tag for this info, I feel that
the power of RSS is not necessarily at the channel level but the item level
and the ability to reuse individual items within different aggregations is
very powerful. In the weblog scenario an example would be where you want to
use or refer to an individual posting within an RSS output. (For this reason
I have added a type attribute. If RSS continues apace then distinguishing
newsheadlines from purchase orders will be crucial and I believe is logical
at the item level. The type element would be better referenced with a url
linking to a list and explanation of types <types_link> but here we get into
the realms of namespaces and that is a separate issue.)

There are other things that I think would be useful but at least the above
does not complicate things too much.

DG


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
David Galbraith - Chief Architect, founder
Moreover.com - the webfeed company
david@moreover.com
415-577-8828 (US)
0777-565-8880 (UK)
favorite webfeed:
http://www.moreover.com/xml

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@userland.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 10:49 AM
> To: syndication@egroups.com
> Subject: Re: [syndication] RSS 0.91 - skips & optional stuff
>
>
> I don't understand. Do you have an example? Dave
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Galbraith" <david@moreover.com>
> To: <syndication@egroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 9:36 AM
> Subject: RE: [syndication] RSS 0.91 - skips & optional stuff
>
>
> > The problem with aggregating using RSS at the moment is that if you pull
> > together a list of related items from different sources then the
> aggregator
> > appears to be the source.
> > adding <source> and perhaps <source_link> to the existing <title> and
> <link>
> > would solve this. At he moment the <description> tag is
> sometimes used to
> > contain metadata that would naturally fit into more than one
> element tag.
> > DG
> >
> > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> > David Galbraith - Chief Architect, founder
> > Moreover.com - the webfeed company
> > david@moreover.com
> > 415-577-8828 (US)
> > 0777-565-8880 (UK)
> > favorite webfeed:
> > http://www.moreover.com/xml
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@userland.com]
> > > Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 9:34 AM
> > > To: syndication@egroups.com
> > > Subject: Re: [syndication] RSS 0.91 - skips & optional stuff
> > >
> > >
> > > DJ, I totally agree.
> > >
> > > There's no requirement that an aggregator do anything at all with any
> part
> > > of RSS.
> > >
> > > How do I know? Because there would be no way to enforce such a
> > > requirement,
> > > nor would it be a weblike thing to do.
> > >
> > > My.UserLand certainly doesn't pay attention to all parts of RSS.
> > > And neither
> > > does My.Netscape.
> > >
> > > Dave
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "DJ Adams" <dj.adams@gmx.net>
> > > To: <syndication@egroups.com>
> > > Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 7:52 AM
> > > Subject: Re: [syndication] RSS 0.91 - skips & optional stuff
> > >
> > >
> > > > > a) Optional versus mandatory items -- If an RSS supplier
> includes an
> > > > > <textInput> or <image> element, am I as an agreggator
> "required" to
> > > render
> > > > > those items when I render the channel?
> > > > >
> > > > > a1) On a sideways-related topic, is the "implied contract" between
> > > > supplier
> > > > > & aggregator that the aggregator will always render the supplied
> items
> > > > > grouped into a channel as they were provided? Or can I
> provide users
> > > with
> > > > a
> > > > > search capability that allows extraction of individual
> > > syndicated items
> > > > from
> > > > > a channel without rendering the whole thing?
> > > >
> > > > FWIW, I think the answers should be (a) NO and (b) NO, YES.
> > > >
> > > > Basically I can see nothing (correct me if I'm wrong) that says that
> RSS
> > > > data must be rendered [in human readable form, e.g. HTML] anyway.
> > > >
> > > > dj
> > > > (neither an active supplier nor aggregator)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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