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

[zac <zac@pixelgeek.com>]

Jonathan Eisenzopf wrote:

> As more tutorials and materials surface on
> the RSS 1.0 proposal, I think that both writers and programmers
> will begin to appreciate the simplicity and extensibility.

I think simplicity just "is". If you need to appreciate something first then
it isn't simple.

This isn't meant as a criticism mind you, just an observation.

> XMLNews - http://www.xmlnews.org
> News Industry Text Format (NITF) XML - http://www.nitf.org
> NewsML - http://www.iptc.org/NMLIntro.htm
> DocBook - http://www.docbook.org

I'm not sure if Docbook is a good comparative example. It needs a higher
level of complexity than most "news" formats would.

> The above are writing formats for text documents. XMLNews Meta is
> similar to RSS. It also contains a format to markup the full
> story. These formats are for writers, but I suspect that writers
> are using tools like WordPerfect or an XML editor to do the
> actual writing. 

Or probably they have an export function that takes their style tags and
resaves them as XML tagged text. This would be especially easy in
WordPerfect.

> I will create a poll and see what happens.

What's the aim of the poll?  I find the examples in it a bit confusing? If I
use a program that creates RSS files is that a program? And does that
necessarily imply that I would have more or less sympathy with a
"complicated" format?

Tools are one thing...and they shouldn't be confused with a level of
expertise or with the users expectations.

Hell..I know someone who used to edit .dxf files in a text editor. :-)


--

       Microsoft: where good ideas go to die


       email: zac@pixelgeek.com
       WWW: http://www.pixelgeek.com/