* Jake Savin <email@hidden> [2005-08-16 22:15]:
> I'll posit that there are probably only two acceptable
> solutions to the problem of which link to pick up with
> autodiscovery:
>
> * Option 1: Give the site author the control. As far as I know,
> most sites which have both feeds present a link tag for each.
>
> * Option 2: Give the user a preference setting: keep the
> decision in the hands of content consumers.
I am dismayed to watch so many discussions focus on the common
offering of identical feeds in a variety of formats to the
exclusion of all the other possible scenarios.
I understand that asking users to pick between identical feeds
which differ only by format is a useless decision. It certainly
is unsatisfactory to require such a choice of them. However,
there currently exists no useful heuristic to identify feeds as
identical with any sort of accuracy.
My site offers two feeds for autodiscovery: one is Atom, the
other is RSS. But the two supply entirely different content: one
is my log’s feed, the other is my del.icio.us link log. Why would
software withhold an arbitrary number of choices from the user?
There is one somewhat reliable heuristic, which is that when two
different autodiscovery links carry the same non-empty title,
they can be assumed to be identical. Its practical value is low,
though, since this is not currently wide-spread convention among
publishers.
I don’t see how it is possible for software to make a choice on
behalf of the user without hiding a *lot* of useful information
from him/her.
See also
http://philringnalda.com/blog/2005/08/different_types_for_different_feeds.php
Regards,
--
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
syndication-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/syndication-dev/email@hidden
This email sent to email@hidden
