Re: [syndication] Re: Thoughts, questions, and issues.

[Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@netcom.com>]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2000, Aaron Swartz wrote:

> If I understand you correctly, you want to create a set of elements for RSS
> that are widely supported and you're free to do that. Just create your own
> namespace and tie it into the proposal. You say namespaces are confusing,
> but I have to disagree with you there. When used properly, they can actually
> make XML easier to understand. Here's an example from my (proposed) content
> module:

I think the key issue here is that sometimes, adding a little bit of
complexity up front actually simplifies things down the road.  Yes,
namespaces are kind of ugly and have a bit of a learning curve, but in
this case, that learning pays off because you can use it to modularize
your syndication format rather than trying to stuff the kitchen sink into
the core.

Of course, namespaces make things harder for the legendary Desperate Perl
Hacker, but nowadays the Perl community (and the Python community, and the
Tcl community, and ...) has access to well-crafted parsers that, among
other things, handle namespaces, so it's only the *very* desperate Perl
hacker (i.e. the one doing CGI work on a super-cheap Web host that won't
do more than bung a copy of an old Perl executable up on their site) who's
hurt by this, or the John David Galt wannabe who's philosophically opposed
to building on others' work.

I'd much rather see a very simple core, with namespaces being used to
include elements serving various specialized purposes, than a very
cluttered core that tries to simultaneously cater to every conceivable
form of syndication.