PhotoBlogging

["Mark Nottingham" <mnot@mnot.net>]

I'm interested in syndicating references to photographs, i.e., JPEGs, not
HTML.

It seems like there are a number of ways that I could go about that. The
most straightforward, correct way to do it seems to be:

<item rdf:about="...">
  <title>My Foot</title>
  <description>Left</description>
  <link>http://example.com/foot/left.jpg</link>
  <dc:type>Image</dc:type>
  <dc:format>image/jpeg</dc:format>
</item>

However, I'm wondering what current-generation aggregators will do with
this, and how bad they'll break. At the very least, people will link to an
ugly image-only view if their aggregator uses a browser to go to links (as
most do). Anyone care to comment?

There are obviously a lot of ways you could do this, from introducing a
new element (e.g., img:link) to putting the link in the description using
HTML markup. Most of them have drawbacks; my goals are to be compatible
with the majority of current RSS readers, yet still offer machine-readable
information when somebody wants to use it.

I'm leaning towards using the rdf:about to link to the image itself, but
to use rss:link to point at an HTML page containing that image, along with
the dc elements above.

--
Mark Nottingham