Atom 1.0 vs RSS 2.0

heeeraldo writes "Is there another format war on the horizon? This wiki compares the two, and finds that even though RSS has far greater deployment (and mindshare), Atom 1.0 solves a lot of the problems associated with it."

Can't tell the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Most users cant tell the difference, even if they cared to.
So, as a conclusion: Noone cares.

No question

[washley]

Since Microsoft is throwing their weight behind RSS, it's pretty obvious it will be the winner.

Once again

[Bad to the Ben]

Back to the VHS Vs. Betamax days eh? If there's one thing that war proved, it's that technical sophistication is irrelevant: mindshare is what matters. If nobody's using it, it doesn't matter if it has the prettiest widgets.

That said, one nice thing about this format war is that there doesn't have to be a loser. It's fairly easy to handle multiple formats in software (note the number of redundant music formats), unlike hardware which is usually impossible. If the process of reading RSS tags or Atom tags is made transparent to the user, who cares who wins?

format war?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it depend on what IE7 will support?

I mean there are still 60% who still use that incompatible Browser because they believe that it is the internet and the Modem is a special powercord.

Re:whoa nelly

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Oddly enough, the Atom Wiki favors Atom.

Which one is growing?

[DanielMarkham]

While the article was a nice feature comparison of the two, it really didn't get into the "format war" question at the top of the page here.
Besides industry support, my only question would be "which one is growing?" Which of these formats is expected to get a new version number sometime soon?
If you ask me, that is why Microsoft is talking about adding "extensions" to RSS -- by growing and adapting the standard, it gets more bells and whistles, more application support, and more momentum in the development community.

Oracle: More Complicated Pricing Model Needed? [whattofix.com]

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're both unencumbered and available to the public (AFAIK), so client software can just support them both. One day, many years down the road, support for the loser can be dropped.

Who needs a format war? Hooray for standards!

Re:Once again

[$RANDOMLUSER]

The difference, in this case, is that the decision to use RSS or Atom will be made by the website operators, not the end consumers. The consumers will use what the webmasters use. And I'm thinking that the webmasters will be attracted to the features rather than the ubiquity of a particular format.

RSS 2.0 vs. Atom vs. RSS 1.0

[Feneric]

AFAIK the format war between RSS 2.0 and RSS 1.0 hasn't even ended yet. In spite of the version numbering, RSS 2.0 is more of a .95 than a 2.0 since it's an incremental improvement over .94. It doesn't really add any capabilities to RSS 1.0 (both can support enclosures). The only real difference is that RSS 1.0 is based on RDF while 2.0 isn't; this supposedly makes 2.0 simpler, but potentially less capable.

It's a pity that all the RSS folks couldn't simply hash together a common standard rather than wasting time on competing standards. Is 2.0 really that much simpler than 1.0? Is 1.0 really that much more capable than 2.0? Does Atom really add much to the mix? It seems that it ought to be possible to find a middle ground.

who cares about the user!

[Anonymous Coward]

All this format commotion just adds more work for programmers. And not a good kinda work either!

It isn't so hard to parse rss or atom, but to do both you pretty much have to separate it out and that might mean twice the code. Pretty lame. You can fake it on the differences between versions of rss if you don't mind leaving stuff out... I tried to fake it on the differences between atom and rss, seemed to work just fine, until I started comparing what it should look like with what it did!

I thought I was gonna be smart and maintain a feed for my personal site. When I finally got sick of trying to explain to all my relatives and friends about what rss is and how they could easily see what updates had been made... My feed's use became limited to listing updates on the front page of that site.

** by the way, for those interested, I just killed firefox- it died after I refused to accept a certificate for some site that I had already closed the tab for. I think firefox is still trying to figure out what to do about the refusal...

Re:Neither...

[Vlatro]

Microsoft and RSS. Are they stupid? I dont want RSS integrated with the operating system in any way. In fact, I wish RSS readers were harder to install. Now we'll have to put up with streaming ads docked into longhorn's side bar. But wait until Microsoft "extends" the capability. Why not have it send back "annymous usage data" on every link clicked. Then instead of going to a news site to read my news, the news I read is targeted to me through a third party, along with ways to better my credit, get my degree online and grow my penis 3" in 20 days... Naturally! Destroy a simple idea that works well, and turn it into a vital system process that'll take up 70Mb of physical memory to use. Why can't we have a technology that just works. Stop "improving" everything, so the average schmuk who doesn't know or care what RSS is will think he needs it, and shell out a few bucks for an upgrade on his OS. Open up the flood gates for a massive wave of usless feeds. I cant wait to see these... "Amazing things dogs do Daily", "Daily Coffee Recipies", "News about people with fishtank webcams", "The William Shatner Diaries" It's like giving a monkey a gun.

Re:Once again

[agibbs]

That's a completely back asswards way of looking at it. Website opperators are forced to cater to broken IE implementations not because they are attracted to its features, but because that's what 80% of their visitors are using. And no, if you're a commercial website you can't just say "Screw 'em if they're not smart enough to use Firefox."

So back to the original point, if no one is using Atom, why would website operators publish in Atom? Though I do agree with the point that's been made that it's easy enough to publish both.

No, no, NO--VHS was technically superior

[bonch]

Back to the VHS Vs. Betamax days eh? If there's one thing that war proved, it's that technical sophistication is irrelevant: mindshare is what matters.

This urban myth needs to die.

VHS was the technically superior format. It provided running times longer than an hour (most movies are longer than an hour, you know), it had slightly superior audio quality, and by subtly lowering picture quality, you could record stuff for up to 8 hours!

The "Betamax was superior but died out due to mindshare" argument is wrong. VHS was superior, and therefore gained mindshare.

Re:Can't tell the difference

[Grant_Watson]

Most users cant tell the difference, even if they cared to. So, as a conclusion: Noone cares.

Most users != Slashdotters