User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050727)
A. Pagaltzis wrote:
> * 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.
Hear, hear!
> 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.
Here's a prime example: using FireFox, go to http://xml.com/. Click on
the orange icon in lower right of the window. You are presented with a
choice between "Subscribe to 'XML.com Articles and Weblogs'" and
"Subscribe to 'XML.com Articles and Weblogs'". No difference in titles.
One happens to be in Atom 1.0 format. The other happens to be in RSS
2.0 format.
Firefox will happily consume both.
Users may continue to provide feeds in multiple formats (I certainly do,
including CDF, ScriptingNews, and OPML). But users should limit
themselves to only providing autodiscovery links to feeds with unique
content. Perhaps full text vs summary, or with enclosures or without,
but there should be some distinction relevant to end users involved -
and that relevance should be identified in the title.
On my site, I provide a feed for my posts, and a feed for my comments.
These clearly have distinct content. If the client application is in a
position where it can present a list of choices, it should present both,
along with the title string I provided to aid the user in their
decision. If the client application is not in a postion to present such
a choice, it should select the first (which in my case is the post).
IMHO, autodiscovery should focus on this use case. In many cases, this
means that a user choice will reduce to "subscribe to this feed, yes or
no?".
In the rare case that you find an consumer who can't handle the format,
then people will have to find the feeds in other ways. On my site, you
can find the formats I support by clicking on a link marked Feeds.
- Sam Ruby
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