RSS Version 3 Specs Up for Review 147
Jonathan Avidan writes "The RSS 3 Homepage now offers its first publicly available specification, the RSS 3 Lite-type Specification First Draft, intended for review and commenting for revision. RSS 3 is a reworking of RSS 2.0, filling the gaps and removing unnecessary features and is fully backwards-compatible, rather than a new format."
Unnecessary features (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:1)
*ducks*
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:1)
so i write a publishing feature and write a reader feature.... how can people think it is "insightful" to assume that this reader feature just magically propegates? donkeys.
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:2)
Is it, necessarily?
Generally, it seems possible for software to exercise optional features and provide useful functionality, that works on a day-to-day basis.
That isn't buggy.
The real problem seems to be that software using optional features is fragile to future changes in the interface spec, or, if that particular application becomes popular, can cause the interface specification to grow complicated, to the point where i
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:1)
There is quite a big difference between striving to provide backwards compatibility, and actually obtaining it.
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:1)
Actually, I think I'll re-edit the entire line. It should not "strive" but rather "be" backward compatible, as it already is.
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:2, Informative)
6. The Standard should strive to remain as backwards compatible as possible with the RSS 2.0 standard
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:1)
1.A list of alterations of the RSS 2.0.1 format:
1. There must be at least one channel containing at least one item in any RSS document
2. The RSS document MIME type is "application/rss+xml"
3. The content of the <language> element is now not specified by the W3C or Netscape documents but rather a compilation according to the RFC1766 (using the ISO639 required
Re:Unnecessary features (Score:1)
durnit (Score:4, Funny)
Re:durnit (Score:1, Insightful)
While we're on the subject... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:2)
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:2, Informative)
Huh?
They're choosing "web feeds" as the user interface text to mean RSS, Atom et al. The article says nothing about them modifying the feed schema.
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:4, Interesting)
That is more likely to be based on the IETF ATOM standard though than RSS 3.0. But it really does not matter which one Microsoft picks, just that they pick one and only one. Google made a good choice when they went with ATOM.
RSS is a mess, it became a mess because people refused to go to a standards forum and the result was a whole slew of incompatible ad-hoc extensions. There should be one syndication format and that should be a standard maintained by W3C or IETF.
Renaming RSS Web feeds makes a lot of sense, just as renaming the 802.11b WiFi made sense. RSS is underspecified and fragmented, just like 802.11b was. The point of WiFi was you knew stuff would work together. So renaming RSS Web Feeds makes a great deal of sense.
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:2)
Except that the term WiFi makes no sense whatsoever. Ah well, it's a little too late to complain about that one...
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:2)
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:1)
Give me a break. That's like saying that they've co-opted HTML and renamed it "web pages". It doesn't often make sense to refer to features by their underlying protocols / file formats. I suppose you SMTP your friends rather than e-mailing them?
This especially makes sense here, since web feeds will not only use RSS but also Atom.
RSS 9.x, uh? Talk about innovation ... (Score:1)
Yes, definitely to be taken with a pinch of snuff. Or at least with an eye for interesting typos :)
Re:While we're on the subject... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a better name, but Microsoft sure didn't come up with it; people in usability have been recommending the "feed" name for quite some time now in order to make feeds more accessible to the general public. The reasoning, of course, is the same as in calling your browser a "web browser" and not an "HTML/XHTML viewer".
Yay, XHTML in RSS (Score:5, Informative)
<clouds>
<skipHours>
<skipDays>
<textInput>
<source> element
<pics> element
<guid> element's optional "isPemraLink" attribute
And added
The <comments> element's optional "type" attribute
The <pubDate> element's optional "type" attribute
The <ttl> element's optional "span" attribute
Looks like good news for bloggers and God knows what for stuff like GeoRSS or BlogTorrents
I've been waiting for that a long time now
Re:Yay, XHTML in RSS (Score:2)
I mean, it's fairly obvious from what they removed that the specification was never terribly well thought-out in the first place, so this can only help. Oh, and incidentally - I was going to chastize your spelling on "isPemraLink" - only to find that that's how it's spelled in the article. Who knew that the original specification was so flawed
Re:Yay, XHTML in RSS (Score:2)
Re:Yay, XHTML in RSS (Score:1)
I thought it stood for (Score:2)
I am still a little concerned that RSS does not become too 'feature rich', there is a reason it is called RSS.
Doesn't it stand for Rich Site Summary?
Re:I thought it stood for (Score:2)
Gzip RSS (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gzip RSS (Score:5, Insightful)
It is. It's part of the HTTP specification, RFC 2616 [ietf.org]. Every data format transmitted over HTTP can take advantage of it. There's no need to treat RSS as a special case.
Re:Gzip RSS (Score:2)
It can read the whole document and notice
that <item> occurs alot and replace it with one bit.
Re:Gzip RSS (Score:1, Informative)
that occurs alot and replace it with one bit.
Uh, no it can't. bzip2 uses
- run length encoding
- move-to-front buffering
- the Burrows-Wheeler block transform (sorts the data in a reversible way; the output is usually more compressible)
- run length encoding (again)
- huffman encoding
There's no searching for repeated sequences beyond the BW transform. You're not going to replace a common sequence with a single bit.
Re:Gzip RSS (Score:2)
Last time i checked [wikipedia.org], yes.
this is a job for atom! (Score:2)
blech, versioning quagmire in feed formats. who needs the hassle? just use Atom 1.0 [feedvalidator.org] from IETF, no less.
An implementing client should support everything (Score:3, Insightful)
How about all five RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, RSS 3.0 and of course ATOM. This will be really a joy for implementers.
Re:An implementing client should support everythin (Score:5, Informative)
Five? There are nine different versions of RSS [diveintomark.org]. Not counting this new RSS 3.0, or the previous RSS 3.0 that has been around for years [aaronsw.com].
Re:An implementing client should support everythin (Score:1)
Re:An implementing client should support everythin (Score:1)
Is it an accident.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Announcement reproduced below:
The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'The Atom Syndication Format' as a Proposed Standard
This document is the product of the Atom Publishing Format and Protocol Working Group.
The IESG contact persons are Scott Hollenbeck and Ted Hardie.
A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-at
Technical Summary:
This document describes the Atom format for syndication. It is XML-based and is considered to be the successor to the earlier RSS formats. Its primary use is for web-based content, but is expected to be used for non-web content as well, such as personal news feeds.
Working Group Summary:
Some members of the working group remain unenthusiastic about some sections of the document, but the chairs strongly believe that there is rough (or better) consensus in support of the document as a whole.
For some of the parts with the most contention, there cannot be more than very rough consensus due to basic differences in the way people would design parts of the format, particularly given that we have many models in existence with the different flavors of RSS. For some parts of the document, there is contention about whether or not a particular item should or should not be in the Atom core versus being an extension. For some parts, there is contention whether there should be MUST/SHOULD/MAY leeway for content creators in the presence or absence of an element, or the semantic content of an element; the
group really pushed RFC 2119 around during the past few months.
Protocol Quality
Scott Hollenbeck and the XML Directorate have reviewed the specification for the IESG. Test implementations have confirmed basic protocol soundness.
Re:Is it an accident.... (Score:2)
Besides, RSS 3.0 is already taken:
http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/rss30 [aaronsw.com]
Robert Sayre
Complete accident (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Complete accident (Score:3, Interesting)
So basically, you'd swear, under penalty of perjury, that you were completely unaware of a development of major significance for your #1 competitor, that's been pending for months?
If that's not true, then you are dishonest. If it is true, then you are out of touch with the communiity that you claim to serve. Either way, it's not good.
And what's up with this? [rss3.org]
Sorry Jonathan, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Between that and Dave Winer's sheer craziness (and the craziness of those like you who drank too much of Dave's cool-aid), the future lies in the open standard called Atom, not in RSS 2 or RSS 3.
Heck, at this point even RSS 1.0 has a far better chance of success than RSS 2, with more and more people picking it as a base for extensible microformats after realizing that RSS 1.0 got a lot of things right years before most people even realized why they were needed.
Why? (Score:1)
How about a "Next"/"Back" option (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about a "Next"/"Back" option (Score:2)
Awful, awful idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I get the feeling that this is a practical joke/troll by Jonathan Avidan - the person who is editing this new specification, the person who maintains the website linked to, and who submitted this article to Slashdot.
Yeah, the RSS 2 specification could do with cleaning up and clarification. No, it's not feasible because of too many people doing stupid things like announcing new versions of RSS all on their own and fragmenting the community.
From the FAQ: [rss3.org]
Follow the link. It's a new message board with no posts.
There is zero community behind this "standard", it's just a spec some guy decided to write of his own accord. In contrast, a real community effort, Atom, has just reached 1.0 and is standardized by the IETF. Nobody should take this "RSS 3.0" seriously.
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:4, Interesting)
The 0.9x class of standards is outdated and underdocumented. The 2.0 class is highly underdocumented, filled with unnecessary features though lacking others which could be useful. The RSS 3 standard is supposed to extensively document the standard, to expand where expansion is needed and to remove unnecessary features.
Is any of you satisfied with the explanation that the world needs a new RSS standard because the other versions are not well documented? What on earth stops him (Jonathan Avidan) from documenting them properly?
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:2)
I did agree with that, a while ago. Then a group of people got together, created a new specification, that used a different name (as the RSS 2.0 specification suggests), worked with the community, put the specification through the IETF standardisation process, and the result is Atom 1.0.
So the real question isn't "why don't you improve RSS 2.0?", the real question
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:1)
Agreed. It's highly unusual that no blogs [technorati.com] in the Technorati index (of apparently 15.4 million sites) link to it. If this was a real community effort, you would expect to find some discussion/rumours on the new "standard".
Perhaps it's just somebody trying to irritate Dave Winer or somebody suffer
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, his PHP mail() configuration is hosed. Yeah, I take it seriously when a guy writing RSS standards can't configure his server. Sure. Whatever. But it can happen to anyone, so I won't pass judgement on that alone.
I read the standard, went to the forum, and pointed out some valid concerns about one of its sections.
The response to those concerns will tell me just how serious
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:2)
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:1)
*Shrug*
I'm writing the FeedTools library for Ruby. I took one look at his spec and came to the same conclusion you did. I shrugged because my parser can already read his spec without any changes to my code at all. I won't actually output anything into this format unless I see a good reason to, but in terms of parsing, it is effectively backwards compatible for parsers that are sufficiently liberal in what they accept. I haven't tried it, but I assume Mark Pilgrim's feedparser for Python would happily
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:2)
As a matter of fact, I will shortly announce RSS 6.2. The Initial Private Community Draft will be released once I have pasted my name into the Atom specs.
Re:Awful, awful idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Where? I see Dave mentioned a lot on that website, but nothing so far that indicates Dave even knows about this. For example:
This sounds like Dave's got something to do with RSS 3 at first glance, but in actual fact, it merely says that he co-authored the RSS 2.0 specification, and that this guy, Jonathan Avidan, wrote a specification that is based on that specification. Dave's listed as "a relevant link" [rss3.org], but only with respect to him authoring the RSS 2 specification. He's mentioned again [rss3.org], but once more, only that Jonathan Avidan is indebted to him for writing the RSS 2 specification:
The closest that website comes to claiming "Dave Winer approval", is in the FAQ [rss3.org]. However, that's a copy of Dave's history of RSS [harvard.edu], except for the fact that the original copy doesn't mention RSS 3.0 at all. It just looks like he copied that page, stuck "According to Dave Winer" at the beginning, and "RSS 3 begins development" at the end.
Remember, Dave considers RSS to be "finished". From the RSS 2.0 specification: [harvard.edu]
rss3? (Score:2)
But it already exists! [aaronsw.com]. Has for almost three years!
Re:rss3? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad you posted that.
I realise that Aaron was probably joking, in order to make fun of Dave Winer, but still, the XML crap is totally pwn3d by his version of RSS 3.
Seriously. Which of these is more compact and easy to read:
Re:rss3? (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, you do realise that XML is merely a simplified subset of SGML, on which HTML is based? Hard to agree that the Internet "got along just fine", when its killer app is based on something that is very similar to XML, only far more complicated
Sounds like RSS to me.
Re:rss3? (Score:2)
Yes.
The meaning of "simplified" is questionable here, though. It's easier to parse and generate, but harder to read and write. Simplified for computers, but made more complex for humans.
But the older versions of HTML were not in XML, so for all intents and pu
Re:rss3? (Score:2)
I wouldn't say that. What does <p/test/ mean? And what will browsers do with it? With <input disabled>, what is the name of the attribute and what is its value?
XML syntax is more regular. Yeah, closing all your elements explicitly might be tedious, but it's certainly simpler than remembering arcane rules like that.
Re:rss3? (Score:2)
It has a fixed depth. That's not a tree, or at least not a good use of a tree. With H
Re:rss3? (Score:2)
Now if you had said that, then I would have agreed with you. But you said something entirely different. Of course XML isn't a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet.
I'm saying that your original statement, "fuck XML altogether. The Internet got along just fine using custom text/binary based formats for three
Re:rss3? (Score:2)
Re:HTTP! (Score:2)
It's the fact that it's decentralised hypertext that makes the WWW work, not the fact that documents are transferred from one place to the other. The thing that makes it decentralised hypertext is HTML, not HTTP.
Or, to put it another way, people care about what they view, not how it came to be on their computer.
Re:rss3? (Score:1)
Re:rss3? (Score:2)
Atom RSS (Score:2)
Atom seems far superior to RSS 2.0 and much farther along than RSS 3.0.
Is someone trying to give Dave Winer a heart attack?
Oh no... (Score:1)
Atom's lineage is clear (Score:2)
When I chose to implement syndication I went with Atom because of the bickering over RSS. Atom is far from perfect, but i
Atom is scary (Score:2)
http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/tutorials/a
Someone needs to write a simple RSS->Atom migration guide, leaving out all the content-management crappola.
downwards compatible?, so is windows 3.x (Score:1)
Re:downwards compatible?, so is windows 3.x (Score:1)
Gestapo? (Score:2)
This RSS3 spec is starting to be no longer really simple. Are they going to drop the 'R'? If so I think I might have to side with Microsoft and Google and opt for a name change.
Re:Gestapo? (Score:2)
I dunno, calling it 'S' just doesn't seem to work, somehow.
Re:Gestapo? (Score:2)
why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:why? (Score:1)
A p
Re:why? (Score:1)
Sorry - my mistake - should have been RSS 2.0 instead of 1.0. Though, it does not really matter, as it is a plain text, simplified down to absurd version of RSS. :)
This question is inquisitive. (Score:2)
Re:This question is inquisitive. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This question is inquisitive. (Score:1)
Re:This question is inquisitive. (Score:4, Informative)
2. The term "informative" describes sections (or comments/notes) which give certain details for further knowledge and do not describe behavior to which implementors must adhere
3. The term "non-normative" describes sections (or comments/notes) which describe behaviors or features of recommendation nature or changing nature
4. The words "must", "must not", "required", "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "recommended", "may", "may not" and "optional" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [faqs.org]
Your reply was normative (Score:2)
Thanks, that makes sense, I suppose. It is pedantic, but that's how standards are supposed to be I suppose.
Authentication? (Score:2)
Re:Authentication? (Score:4, Informative)
You're looking at the wrong specification. RSS is transmitted over HTTP. HTTP provides authentication.
The thing preventing this is that common feed readers do not support enough of HTTP's features to be able to supply a username and password in a standard HTTP way.
Like gzip compression, above, this isn't a problem that needs to be solved on a format-by-format basis. The transfer protocol handles it for all formats.
Who Are You? (Score:2, Interesting)
And I thought it was bad years ago (Score:2, Informative)
This whole mess is just not funny anymore.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/11/10/122820/9
we'll-be-supporting-atom-in-a-few-weeks dept. (Score:2)
He must be new around here (Score:1)
Re:He must be new around here (Score:2)
What did he do, type in random URLs and see if anyone of them mentioned RSS 3?
Troll or idiot, take your pick. Me, I'm working on RSS 4.0
Re:He must be new around here (Score:1)
Yahoo [yahoo.com]:
MSN [msn.com]:
Maybe this time... (Score:1)
Sausage (Score:2)
Basically, it's all a bunch of pointless dick-w
Fool of the Day (Score:1)
First Podcast! (Score:2)
Re:Im sure Microsoft can improve it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Im sure Microsoft can improve it (Score:2)
"web-feeds" is about as generic and accurate a description as I can think of.
Reading any more into that article than they just came up with a generic name to use in IE to encompass all current and future web fe