Re: Category

["Aaron of Montreal" <aaron_of_montreal@yahoo.ca>]

--- In syndication@y..., "Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@h...> wrote:

> The sobering fact is that out of the 5000 feeds known to the 
> syndic8.com database only ONE is using the taxo information. 
There's 
> about 50 that are including the taxo namespace header without any 
> real use of it.

I haven't checked, but I think I may be that one person. I like the
taxo: namespace but while it may or may not be too big/complicated it
is definitely not intuitive. It is important to remember that people
who care about how this stuff works are very much in the minority.
There are lots of good reasons for chunking all of this stuff in to
discreet pieces but that stuff needs to be hidden from most people
because they really don't care.

I recently revisited Rael's RSS 1.0 example generator and was struck
by the relative simplicity of the taxonomy/category widget. That,
however, is not reflected anywhere else in any of the docs.
 
My own feeling, and I'm not usually one to shy away from making things
overly-complex, is that anything with an "rdf:Bag"[1] in it is not
something I want to deal with.
 
> > All told, I'd love to see some forward movement across RSS 
> > implementations of something simple and agreeable like an RSS
0.9x 
> > <subject> / RSS 1.0 <dc:subject> attribute (this already exists 
> > in the RSS 1.0 Dublin Core module).

I would be interested in hearing arguments for and against keeping the
taxo: widgets if the dc:subject can essentially do the same thing.
 
> I'm with you up to a point.  Is the DC use of the 
> appelation 'subject' a problem?  Being that the word 'subject' is 
> more often associated with an e-mail address header line.  Or is
this 
> a syntax argument?  Is it possible for folks using the toolsets to 
> grasp that this is 'dc:subject' not 'Subject:'?

Having gone to art school, I feel a certain responsibility to point
out that you are standing on the edge of the perception versus intent
 debate. It is an abyss from which there is no return ;-)

But seriously, I think the two concepts are similar enough in nature
that it would be pretty straightforward for people to travel back and
forth, between the two, without much trouble.

[1] A bag? Is this like a bag of holding in Dungeons and Dragons?