On 8/17/05, Jake Savin <email@hidden> wrote:
> Ok then. This is a real issue, but I don't think it's necessarily a blocker
> for solving the problem in Safari. Please don't take this as a loaded
> question, but is it really necessary to disambiguate between the different
> versions of RSS aside from RSS1?
Kinda, yeah. You can successfully parse RSS2 and RSS 9.x versions with
the same code, but my experience with Thunderbird has been that Atom
or RSS2 (with pubdates and guids) is preferable, because I can
provide a better experience. With RSS1, I might be able to, but that
kind of assumes a magic combination of extension elements (that do
make for a pretty RDF model, but are poorly specified). I wouldn't
want users to get RSS 0.9x by default if there is an RSS1, RSS2, or
Atom feed available.
> On a related note, I do think it's a little strange that Apple chose to
> prefer Atom feeds in Safari, while using (primarily?) RSS 2.0 in iTunes' for
> podcasting support, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to the
> issue at hand. The point is that the choice was made unilaterally (though
> probably not with any bad or political intent) by Apple, rather than leaving
> the preference in the hands of either content providers or end-users.
Disagree. If content providers prefer RSS2 or RSS1, they should make
their feed available in only that flavor (that's a great way to make
the choice...). I find the idea that content providers or end-users
would have a preference between formats a bit strange. Nominating a
"main feed" is another story.
...
> I have to disagree on this point. The reason that this came up in the first
> place is that some feed readers only support one format or the other, and
> users have a real need for the software to be able to find a compatible
> feed. If a website only provides a link to one format, then all of the users
> whose software supports only some other format(s) will be out of luck. I
> think many non-technical users would just say to themselves at that point,
> "Oh too bad, this site doesn't have a feed. I guess I won't be reading it."
> Not good, IMHO.
I'm not very convinced by the Shrook 1.x use case. Users using an
aggregator that can't read, say, any of the 7 million blogspot.com
blogs aren't going to have a good experience. Whether that's right or
wrong is kind of irrelevant at this point, but I think you'd have to
try quite hard to find an aggregator that doesn't support Atom 0.3
(Shrook 2.x has supported it for ~1.5 years).
Robert Sayre
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