Jeremy Allaire has a comprehensive analysis of where he thinks RSS, RDF and SOAP should go next: A common language for parsing the content of a syndication stream, based on what he calls "RSS-Data." A key excerpt
RSS-Data would require no changes or revisions to RSS 2.0, though developers wishing to support RSS-Data would obvioulsy need to write RSS parsers that recognized and deserialized RSS-data in the "sdl:data" namespace. But, rather than writing custom parsers for every new namespace extension to RSS, developers could confidently work with just one RSS/Data parser that handled 99% of their application meta-data needs. Here's what I think is necessary for RSS-Data, which is almost literally the XML-RPC data serialization model. Same data model, including all elements... Unicode-based, fixing a known problem with XML-RPC Time-zone aware, also fixing a known problem a variety of serialization approachesRSS-Data could be used inside any RSS 2.0 element that can contain namespace extensions, including "item," "channel," and inside other custom namespaces. Likewise, other XML applications in need of a simple object data exchange format could use the "sdl" namespace to extend their applications.
Dave Winer seems to think it's a good idea and Marc Canter thinks it rocks -- two typically argumentative characters agreeing about something like this is significant. If this were to take shape rapidly, without the requisite wrangling between competing providers of syndication tools, it should provide a foundation for organizing a wide range of data types (text, audio, video, Flash, voice connections) into a syndication feed for coherent consumption by users who would not need to manage multiple applications to access all "the stuff" in the feed.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at October 1, 2003 11:33 AM | TrackBackMitch, with all due respect to Dave, Marc and Jeremy, there has been a lot of effort expended by the folks working on the Atom syndication standard. Is that all for naught? I, for one, hope that the best technical solution will win out. Would Jeremy be willing to submit his ideas to the Atom Wiki and mailing list for consideration?
Posted by: Gen Kanai at October 1, 2003 06:47 PMGen,
I think that if the RSS-Data format isn't submitted to the Atom Wiki it would be hard to make useful.
My point about going quickly without wrangling between providers of syndications tools was probably not clear enough -- we don't need Microsoft or Userland or any other toolmaker's imprimatur. Jeremy's solution has the benefit of being simple and I was expressing my enthusiasm for moving this whole debate forward. Any concession by Dave Winer would be helpful in that process.
I think that Atom, since it hasn't been submitted for standards consideration would benefit from Jeremy's ideas, too. Jeremy's approach is very similar to Atom's, for example with a concern about timezones, while Jeremy's approach is more explicit about the delivery of media content, based on my reading -- at least, his intention to deliver syndicated media is more explicit, as both deal with different content types.
There really aren't that many differences and, if I had to guess, this is a bit of political legwork to break down some of the resistance to changes in RSS that have forced the Atom group to move forward.
Mitch
Posted by: Mitch Ratcliffe at October 1, 2003 07:17 PMHi, to be honest, I haven't spent much time looking at Atom until the last couple of days. Nonetheless, the proposed data format (let's call it Simple Data Format - SDF) could be used and applied in Atom just as in RSS 2.0. Both provide a means for extensibility via XML Namespaces, so both could support a simple data format inside namespace extensions.
Posted by: Jeremy Allaire at October 2, 2003 07:33 AMWell I went ahead and posted Jeremy's proposal to the Atom list and the response was something like, "this sounds interesting but could you show us an example of what you mean?"
If SDF is indeed independent of Atom and RSS 2.0, then maybe it is not an issue?
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