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."
Back to the VHS Vs. Betamax days eh? If there's one thing that war proved, it's that technical sophistication is irrelevant: mindshare is what matters. If nobody's using it, it doesn't matter if it has the prettiest widgets.
That said, one nice thing about this format war is that there doesn't have to be a loser. It's fairly easy to handle multiple formats in software (note the number of redundant music formats), unlike hardware which is usually impossible. If the process of reading RSS tags or Atom tags is made transparent to the user, who cares who wins?
Re:whoa nelly
by
$RANDOMLUSER
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Oddly enough, the Atom Wiki favors Atom.
-- No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
- Winston Churchill
Atom's More Than A Syndication Format
by
arthurs_sidekick
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Atom is both a syndication format and an API for creation, updating, and deletion of content. It's already in widespread use by Blogger.
What's been (all but) finalized is the syndication format (and rules for extending it). This allows the working group to firm up the details of the publishing API, which, for my money, is the real payoff with Atom.
A pretty good overview of the history of RSS and the motivations behind Atom is here.
-- "Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Re:No question
by
Antity-H
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
And Google is throwing its weight behin atom (at least in gmail) so who knows ?
It's called namespaces...
by
jeroenb
·
· Score: 4, Informative
and it doesn't make their RSS-files incompatible with "standard" readers.
Re:I would consider...
by
superskippy
·
· Score: 5, Informative
RSS and Atom are standardised ways of having a live list of stories appear from say a newssite (like this one) in various programs. Firefox calls these live bookmarks. I came here using firefox by clicking on my toolbar, seeing all of the new stories, and deciding I was interested in this one. You can also use it for desktop "news ticker" applets.
The trouble with RSS (short answer) is that there are at least three different versions of it invented by different people. As far as I know there was an RSS 0.7, then someone else invented a new protocol and called it RSS 1, then the original person invented RSS and called it version 2, but some people argue 2 is worse than 1:(. All of these standard's owners have been accused of not taking on board comments from the wider community.
Atom is another protocol for doing the same thing. Technical issues aside, it gets my vote because they didn't decide to call it RSS 3. Or RSS 10.
RSS 2.0 vs. Atom vs. RSS 1.0
by
Feneric
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
AFAIK the format war between RSS 2.0 and RSS 1.0 hasn't even ended yet. In spite of the version numbering, RSS 2.0 is more of a.95 than a 2.0 since it's an incremental improvement over.94. It doesn't really add any capabilities to RSS 1.0 (both can support enclosures). The only real difference is that RSS 1.0 is based on RDF while 2.0 isn't; this supposedly makes 2.0 simpler, but potentially less capable.
It's a pity that all the RSS folks couldn't simply hash together a common standard rather than wasting time on competing standards. Is 2.0 really that much simpler than 1.0? Is 1.0 really that much more capable than 2.0? Does Atom really add much to the mix? It seems that it ought to be possible to find a middle ground.
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!
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.
Parent Makes No Sense
by
samael
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Atom isn't forked off of RSS, it's another implementation of the concept of syndicated content. RSS itself isn't a concept, it's a specification for a data transfer format.
The parent post really doesn't make any sense at all.
Re:Where's the comparison?
by
Isofarro
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Atom cleanly specifies how to incorporate plain text, html and XHTML content in an entry. Covering how text and html needs to be escaped, etc.
RSS2.0 had a problem last year where Reuters suffered a public embarrassment adopting the format. They followed the specification correctly, and it resulted in silent data loss - their stock identifiers were in angled brackets and got treated as an HTML tag by news aggregators.
It wasn't rocket science, but this simple thing turned out to be impossible to do with RSS2.0 - it was tried many times. After the funky feed debacle, the community realised that a separate format independent of RSS2.0 was the only way to fix the underlying problem.
The proponents of RSS2.0 tried to fix the silent data loss, and ended up breaking backwards compatibility with RSS0.92 - something they weren't prepared to do before Atom.
As someone who's implemented them both
by
savala
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Atom wins hands-down. Things are actually well specified.
I can just walk through the atom specification, implementing it as I go, and not have any questions about what is required, what type of content can be present in any one element, I don't have to look up five even less well-specified different modules just to get the basics of the feed together (and thus also don't have to worry about namespaces), what elements and attributes mean (actually, I spent a minor five minutes agonizing over what I should put in the term atribute of the category element, given that the label attribute contains the human readable version, before realizing that I was completely free in this, as the "scheme" os up to myself, and deciding to mirror how categories are named in the url on the website (which I found to be consistent with various other already existing atom 1.0 feeds that I checked)), or... well, basically any kind of question that you need to think about as you implement a new and previously unknown specification.
RSS on the other hand (any of the 9 incompatible versions)... *shudders* Those specifications don't tell me anything. I copy/paste from other feeds and heavily use the feedvalidator, but... *shakes his head*
Once all feedreaders have been updated to support Atom 1.0 completely, I'll go and pull the plug on the remaining RSS feeds, and good riddance too!
Slashdot Mirror
... IE7 will support 'extended' RSS. So there!
0 .aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/06/24/43239
Regards, Yogix
Back to the VHS Vs. Betamax days eh? If there's one thing that war proved, it's that technical sophistication is irrelevant: mindshare is what matters. If nobody's using it, it doesn't matter if it has the prettiest widgets.
That said, one nice thing about this format war is that there doesn't have to be a loser. It's fairly easy to handle multiple formats in software (note the number of redundant music formats), unlike hardware which is usually impossible. If the process of reading RSS tags or Atom tags is made transparent to the user, who cares who wins?
Oddly enough, the Atom Wiki favors Atom.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Atom is both a syndication format and an API for creation, updating, and deletion of content. It's already in widespread use by Blogger.
What's been (all but) finalized is the syndication format (and rules for extending it). This allows the working group to firm up the details of the publishing API, which, for my money, is the real payoff with Atom.
A pretty good overview of the history of RSS and the motivations behind Atom is here.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
And Google is throwing its weight behin atom (at least in gmail) so who knows ?
and it doesn't make their RSS-files incompatible with "standard" readers.
RSS and Atom are standardised ways of having a live list of stories appear from say a newssite (like this one) in various programs. Firefox calls these live bookmarks. I came here using firefox by clicking on my toolbar, seeing all of the new stories, and deciding I was interested in this one. You can also use it for desktop "news ticker" applets.
The trouble with RSS (short answer) is that there are at least three different versions of it invented by different people. As far as I know there was an RSS 0.7, then someone else invented a new protocol and called it RSS 1, then the original person invented RSS and called it version 2, but some people argue 2 is worse than 1 :(. All of these standard's owners have been accused of not taking on board comments from the wider community.
Atom is another protocol for doing the same thing. Technical issues aside, it gets my vote because they didn't decide to call it RSS 3. Or RSS 10.
AFAIK the format war between RSS 2.0 and RSS 1.0 hasn't even ended yet. In spite of the version numbering, RSS 2.0 is more of a .95 than a 2.0 since it's an incremental improvement over .94. It doesn't really add any capabilities to RSS 1.0 (both can support enclosures). The only real difference is that RSS 1.0 is based on RDF while 2.0 isn't; this supposedly makes 2.0 simpler, but potentially less capable.
It's a pity that all the RSS folks couldn't simply hash together a common standard rather than wasting time on competing standards. Is 2.0 really that much simpler than 1.0? Is 1.0 really that much more capable than 2.0? Does Atom really add much to the mix? It seems that it ought to be possible to find a middle ground.
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!
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
Atom isn't forked off of RSS, it's another implementation of the concept of syndicated content. RSS itself isn't a concept, it's a specification for a data transfer format.
The parent post really doesn't make any sense at all.
My Journal
Atom cleanly specifies how to incorporate plain text, html and XHTML content in an entry. Covering how text and html needs to be escaped, etc.
RSS2.0 had a problem last year where Reuters suffered a public embarrassment adopting the format. They followed the specification correctly, and it resulted in silent data loss - their stock identifiers were in angled brackets and got treated as an HTML tag by news aggregators.
It wasn't rocket science, but this simple thing turned out to be impossible to do with RSS2.0 - it was tried many times. After the funky feed debacle, the community realised that a separate format independent of RSS2.0 was the only way to fix the underlying problem.
The proponents of RSS2.0 tried to fix the silent data loss, and ended up breaking backwards compatibility with RSS0.92 - something they weren't prepared to do before Atom.
Atom wins hands-down. Things are actually well specified .
I can just walk through the atom specification, implementing it as I go, and not have any questions about what is required, what type of content can be present in any one element, I don't have to look up five even less well-specified different modules just to get the basics of the feed together (and thus also don't have to worry about namespaces), what elements and attributes mean (actually, I spent a minor five minutes agonizing over what I should put in the term atribute of the category element, given that the label attribute contains the human readable version, before realizing that I was completely free in this, as the "scheme" os up to myself, and deciding to mirror how categories are named in the url on the website (which I found to be consistent with various other already existing atom 1.0 feeds that I checked)), or... well, basically any kind of question that you need to think about as you implement a new and previously unknown specification.
RSS on the other hand (any of the 9 incompatible versions)... *shudders* Those specifications don't tell me anything. I copy/paste from other feeds and heavily use the feedvalidator, but... *shakes his head*
Once all feedreaders have been updated to support Atom 1.0 completely, I'll go and pull the plug on the remaining RSS feeds, and good riddance too!