Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the the-unseen-battle? dept.
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."
I would consider...
by
zegebbers
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This isn't trolling, just confusion. I would consider myself to be relatively informed about tech matters, however there is very little info about atom and it is hard to google for. Would it be possible to have a tiny summary as to what atom is ?
Re:I would consider...
by
laffer1
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This is very interesting because I never realized the parallels between RSS and HTML standards. Consider all the changes between the various HTML standards. Considering this is slashdot, I won't go into extreme detail. A little reading on w3.org, etc. will clarify for those that do no know.
The w3 refactored HTML 4.01 into XHTML 1.0 using XML instead of SGML. This is similar to the RDF to standard XML change in RSS. Then, the w3 modularized XHTML 1.0 Strict into XHTML 1.1, similar to the back and forth element changes between the.9x versions of RSS. Next, the w3 released XTHML 2.0 which is not HTML any longer. They try yet again to get rid of the image tag, and it hasn't worked before why now? You can't have web pages without images, and browsers don't support XHTML 2 yet. This change is like the RSS 1.0 spec in RDF.
Personally, I'd like to see an RDF feed because the idea of RDF is neat. I currently use the RSS 2 feed because I figured it was popular, and out of confusion didn't know what else to do. I may look at atom. I need this for open source blogging software i'm writing.
The various streams of RSS feeds in different formats make writing an RSS feed parser like a browser. You have to deal with a ton of different formats. Its the authors fault and individuals faults for wanting a popular standard enhanced for their special cases. I still know people that author in HTML 2.0 or that ISO version of HTML.
Lastly, while the short answer is that we don't have compatible standards, I'd like to point out its XML. Maybe the standards people could create some XSLT documents to convert their bastardized RSS formats into bastardized XHTML/HTML format. 2 bastards are better than one.:)
Either that article is heavily biased or ATOM 1.0 completely demolishes everything that RSS is/was/used to be. I wish that the article would have at least showed one or two points where RSS is better, but it appears that there isn't any such points.
Re:whoa nelly
by
axxackall
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The RSS 2.0 specification is copyrighted by Harvard University and is frozen. No significant changes can be made and it is intended that future work be done under a different name; Atom is one example of such work.
This is the point: Atom is just a fork. RSS is a real concept. Forks come and go, a concept stands.
--
Less is more !
Re:No question
by
Antity-H
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
And Google is throwing its weight behin atom (at least in gmail) so who knows ?
One thing that really bothers me about RSS, no matter how much I like it, is how every site uses it differently. I was writing a simple aggregation program and using php/magpierss. Every single site puts the date and time of the items in a different tag. Some use datetime, some use pubdate, some use dc->date and some don't put the date! Seriously, no matter the standard it wont help if not everyone uses it fully and properly.
-- The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
For the most part it doesn't matter which you use because client software is going to have to work with both now that they've both been deployed (and for a while Google was only publishing Atom, I'm not sure if they still do that but it forced aggregator developers to get on board).
But because an Atom feed must include a guid element, the client has a way of uniquely identifying an item. This means that when you subscribe to an atom feed, you're not going to see duplicate articles the way you do with RSS when the RSS feed doesn't include a guid or any unique identifier (which is legal) and the client has to make one up by hashing the content.
Re:We use it!
by
TheRaven64
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Slashdot has the most broken RSS feed ever invented. You get banned for 72 hours if you access it more than once every 30 minutes. Not really a problem, except that Slashcode is braindead at identifying individuals. Two computers behind a NAT are treated as the same person, for example. Worse, my ISP uses a transparent proxy for everyone in my city (most people here with broadband use my ISP, since their cable service is a lot cheaper than competing ADSL suppliers). Does Slashdot recognise this? No, they block the transparent proxy whenever more than one person using it accesses the site within a 30 minute period. Clever, huh? The result is that the Slashdot feed is always blocked for me at home.
Re:As If I Cared
by
TheRaven64
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Are you behind a NAT or a transparent proxy (provided by your ISP)? If so, then you are likely, like me, never to be unbanned from the Slashdot RSS feed because it can't tell the difference between you and other people with the same IP.
Re:What is this stuff *for* anyway?
by
shokk
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Because browsing around hundreds of web sites for news is a pain in the ass. Let the information flow to YOU. It's all about structuring the info so you can do more with it beyond simple screen scraping.
I'm not talking about just Dilbert comics or other entertainment outlets. Imagine notification of software updates. Email is lousy for this sort of thing when you get hundreds of emails per day. It's not searchable and it sits in your own account. Another benefit of RSS is control over the lists. You ever get an email from someone you know that didn't really come from someone you know, yet had a nice virus payload attached? This doesn't do that. Any info that comes from the RSS channel is something YOU have subscribed to and unsubscribing is dead easy.
Further, with an RSS Reader I use called Feed On Feeds, you can access its mySQL backend from any other software to do what you want with the information streams. There are many other readers that use this same philosophy. If you MUST have mailing lists, well, then mail out from there; not all of these sites have mailing lists and this would make a great way to present it in that format. You can reblog select posts, or a channel combining a number of other channels.
-- "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't trolling, just confusion. I would consider myself to be relatively informed about tech matters, however there is very little info about atom and it is hard to google for. Would it be possible to have a tiny summary as to what atom is ?
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
Either that article is heavily biased or ATOM 1.0 completely demolishes everything that RSS is/was/used to be. I wish that the article would have at least showed one or two points where RSS is better, but it appears that there isn't any such points.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
And Google is throwing its weight behin atom (at least in gmail) so who knows ?
One thing that really bothers me about RSS, no matter how much I like it, is how every site uses it differently. I was writing a simple aggregation program and using php/magpierss. Every single site puts the date and time of the items in a different tag. Some use datetime, some use pubdate, some use dc->date and some don't put the date! Seriously, no matter the standard it wont help if not everyone uses it fully and properly.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
But because an Atom feed must include a guid element, the client has a way of uniquely identifying an item. This means that when you subscribe to an atom feed, you're not going to see duplicate articles the way you do with RSS when the RSS feed doesn't include a guid or any unique identifier (which is legal) and the client has to make one up by hashing the content.
I wrote a bit about this here.
Slashdot has the most broken RSS feed ever invented. You get banned for 72 hours if you access it more than once every 30 minutes. Not really a problem, except that Slashcode is braindead at identifying individuals. Two computers behind a NAT are treated as the same person, for example. Worse, my ISP uses a transparent proxy for everyone in my city (most people here with broadband use my ISP, since their cable service is a lot cheaper than competing ADSL suppliers). Does Slashdot recognise this? No, they block the transparent proxy whenever more than one person using it accesses the site within a 30 minute period. Clever, huh? The result is that the Slashdot feed is always blocked for me at home.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Are you behind a NAT or a transparent proxy (provided by your ISP)? If so, then you are likely, like me, never to be unbanned from the Slashdot RSS feed because it can't tell the difference between you and other people with the same IP.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Don't forget that Google owns Blogger - and blogger uses Atom.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Because browsing around hundreds of web sites for news is a pain in the ass. Let the information flow to YOU. It's all about structuring the info so you can do more with it beyond simple screen scraping.
I'm not talking about just Dilbert comics or other entertainment outlets. Imagine notification of software updates. Email is lousy for this sort of thing when you get hundreds of emails per day. It's not searchable and it sits in your own account. Another benefit of RSS is control over the lists. You ever get an email from someone you know that didn't really come from someone you know, yet had a nice virus payload attached? This doesn't do that. Any info that comes from the RSS channel is something YOU have subscribed to and unsubscribing is dead easy.
Further, with an RSS Reader I use called Feed On Feeds, you can access its mySQL backend from any other software to do what you want with the information streams. There are many other readers that use this same philosophy. If you MUST have mailing lists, well, then mail out from there; not all of these sites have mailing lists and this would make a great way to present it in that format. You can reblog select posts, or a channel combining a number of other channels.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."