Re: [syndication] Newsreaders display of categories

["Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@ideaspace.net>]

How about making use of the <description> element to contain HTML that presented
your quiz question?  Use HTML to facilitate interaction with that item back to
your quiz handling server.

Then also consider attaching your own module data in the item.  This way a
reader that doesn't 'understand' your modular data can make use of the
description.  A reader that evolves an awareness of your data would use your
data in favor of the HTML description.

Ben's book does a really good job of explaning the larger issues behind use of
RDF.  That chapter alone makes the book worth purchasing.

As to supporting this is a reader, if the readers that support columnar viewing
of items started supporting other columns it would be nice.

-Bill Kearney


----- Original Message -----
From: "Emmanuel. M. Decarie" <emm@scriptdigital.com>
To: <syndication@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 11:01 AM
Subject: [syndication] Newsreaders display of categories


Thanks all for the input on my previous post.

I was thinking further about this question of eLearning and quizzes.

Basically, I want to use a weblog to build a quiz and RSS to display
the content.

I don't know much RSS 1.0 and maybe this protocol could help. I'll
try to catch up and
next week I plan to buy Ben Hammersley book (I'm not so good at
reading specs) and
further my reading on RDF.

Here's my question.

In NetNewsWire, when you look at a headline, you get, depending of
the type of RSS a
couples of columns.

I'll take for example the Burningbird RSS which is based on RSS 1.0
and use for defining topics the Dublin core.

In NetNewsWire, this look like a spreadsheet or a table.

Burningbird Headlines | Date | Creator | Subject

When I click on the Date header column, I can see a view by most or
least recent posts. When I click on a the Creator or Subject headers,
I can see a view ordered by alphabetical order (ascendent or
descendent).

Now to get back on my problem.

What I'd like to display in the headlines headers in the newsreader is this:

Quizzes Headlines | Category | Ident | Position | Material


Quizzes Headlines = questions
ex. What is the capital of Canada?

Category -> type of description which can be question | response |
condition | resource

Ident -> Since each quiz is a RSS channel, each quiz can have up to
10 questions, so each question/response are grouped (i.e. question1,
response1 # 1, response1 # 2, etc...)

Position -> the position of the response in the responses listing.

Condition -> The correct response (i.e response1 # 2 is the correct response)

Material -> type of the description: image | sound | html snippet

Resource -> If the question need to display html | sound | image

So, if your are following me, here's an example of what I'd like to
see in a newsreader:

Quiz Geo  GT60    | Category | Ident | Position | Material
------------------|----------|-------|----------|---------
Canada's capital? | question | 1     | 0        | mattext
Washington        | response | 1     | 1        | mattext
Ottawa            | response | 1     | 2        | mattext
Paris             | response | 1     | 3        | mattext
2                 | condition| 1     | 0        | mattext
France's capital? | question | 2     | 0        | mattext
Washington        | response | 2     | 1        | mattext
Ottawa            | response | 2     | 2        | mattext
Paris             | response | 2     | 3        | mattext
3                 | condition| 2     | 0        | mattext

Why use RSS and a newsreader at all. Well, its a long shot, but the
interface for weblogging is getting easier and easier. And RSS is a
protocol implemented all over the place. The people that will use
what I'd like to build are not geek, but I think that they can easily
grasp the concept. I know that I could parse myself any html to get
this representation in a web page. But I rather use existing tools.

So, does RSS 1.0 or RSS 2.0 need to be modified to be able to have
that kind of format. Can the newsreader support easily that kind of
format?