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

[Dan Lyke <danlyke@flutterby.com>]

Aaron Swartz writes:
> Adding attributes, etc. breaks backwards-compatibility for those of
> us without XML parsers. Of course, I could easily add in another .*?
> in the tag to fix things, but it's still a problem.

If there is a substantial "lightweight/no parser" lobby, why XML at
all? Surely formalizing some sort of lightweight text format, perhaps
name-value pairs of the format /^([A-Za-z0-9_]+?)=(.*)$/ or similar,
would be easier and less ambiguous to parse, and forgo all those
issues like entity expansion, character sets, and extensions the
regular expression writer wasn't aware of?

Certainly most of the RPC over HTTP stuff I've been paid for has used
CGI for the parameter spec and a return type of "text/plain". And
there are a whole lot of plain text formats that are reasonably
adopted that are being glossed over in the pointy-haired "XML is
covered in InfoWorld, so we should implement everything in XML" rush
to join.

I've gotten comfortable with XML, actually like it for a few things
(although it quickly seems to be growing all the warts of SGML), but a
whole lot of the stuff it's used for is a matter of "Oh, look, I've
got a 30 pound sledge here, isn't it convenient we've got all these
nails to drive?", never mind that wallboard screws might be a better
technology when putting up sheetrock.

By the way, I've fleshed out your syndication API calls a little bit
more, but I'm looking down the schedule barrel of Burning Man and in
the midst of changing other infrastructure to support some other
projects, so chances are it'll be another three weeks before I can get
a fixed version back in place.

Dan