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RSS Version 3 Specs Up for Review

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the we'll-be-supporting-atom-in-a-few-weeks dept.

Jonathan Avidan writes "The RSS 3 Homepage now offers its first publicly available specification, the RSS 3 Lite-type Specification First Draft, intended for review and commenting for revision. RSS 3 is a reworking of RSS 2.0, filling the gaps and removing unnecessary features and is fully backwards-compatible, rather than a new format."

11 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Unnecessary features by kevin_conaway · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How does one remove features and still remain backwards compatible?

    1. Re:Unnecessary features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You remove features for which support was optional. Old implementations should discover that you're not using the options, new implementations no longer even check for them.

    2. Re:Unnecessary features by fm6 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The fact remains, software that relies on these features will cease to work. It may well be that RSS 3 is sufficiently backward compatible to support 99% of the software out there. That's still not the same thing as fully backward compatible.

    3. Re:Unnecessary features by John+Hurliman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If software is relying on optional features in order to work, the software is buggy and it's not the job of the protocol to support buggy implementations. There are two types of RSS software; publishing software and reader software. The publishing software is either going to use RSS 1,2, or 3 and should be to spec on whatever version it's publishing. Reader software should be able to read _at least_ the basic forms of RSS 1 and 2, in which case it will have no problem reading RSS 3.

  2. An implementing client should support everything by hritcu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Also worth mentioning is that the Atom syndication standard, currently in development, is out of this standard's scope and does not concern it. Due to contradiction in structure, the standards cannot rely on one another, yet an implementing client should support both standards.

    How about all five RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, RSS 3.0 and of course ATOM. This will be really a joy for implementers.

    --
    If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
  3. Re:Gzip RSS by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why isn't gzip compression of RSS feeds part of the specification?

    It is. It's part of the HTTP specification, RFC 2616. Every data format transmitted over HTTP can take advantage of it. There's no need to treat RSS as a special case.

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  4. Re:Awful, awful idea by Bogtha · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, that was my first thought, but he mentions Dave "RSS 2" as an editor and says he's had a period of private review in his process list.

    Where? I see Dave mentioned a lot on that website, but nothing so far that indicates Dave even knows about this. For example:

    The current standard, RSS 3 Class (which engulfs RSS 3 Lite, RSS 3 Full, RCDL and RRDL), is based on RSS 2.0, which was offered by the Berkmen Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School under the License, authored by Dave Winer (other accredited authors: Roger Cadenhead, Adam Curry and Steve Zellers). This is a derivative work which is meant to replace the 2.0 version.

    This sounds like Dave's got something to do with RSS 3 at first glance, but in actual fact, it merely says that he co-authored the RSS 2.0 specification, and that this guy, Jonathan Avidan, wrote a specification that is based on that specification. Dave's listed as "a relevant link", but only with respect to him authoring the RSS 2 specification. He's mentioned again, but once more, only that Jonathan Avidan is indebted to him for writing the RSS 2 specification:

    For informative purposes, the RSS Version 2.0.1 specification can be found here and is attributed to Dave Winer, amongst others. This is a derivative work and is indebted to their genius and efforts.

    The closest that website comes to claiming "Dave Winer approval", is in the FAQ. However, that's a copy of Dave's history of RSS, except for the fact that the original copy doesn't mention RSS 3.0 at all. It just looks like he copied that page, stuck "According to Dave Winer" at the beginning, and "RSS 3 begins development" at the end.

    Remember, Dave considers RSS to be "finished". From the RSS 2.0 specification:

    Therefore, the RSS spec is, for all practical purposes, frozen at version 2.0.1. We anticipate possible 2.0.2 or 2.0.3 versions, etc. only for the purpose of clarifying the specification, not for adding new features to the format. Subsequent work should happen in modules, using namespaces, and in completely new syndication formats, with new names.

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  5. Re:rss3? by atomm1024 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm glad you posted that.

    I realise that Aaron was probably joking, in order to make fun of Dave Winer, but still, the XML crap is totally pwn3d by his version of RSS 3.

    Seriously. Which of these is more compact and easy to read:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

    <rdf:RDF
    xmlns:rdf="ht tp://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns= "http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/">

    <chan nel>
    <title>Slashdot</title>
    <link>http://slashd ot.org/</link>
    <description>News for nerds, stuff that matters</description>
    </channel>

    <image>
    <tit le>Slashdot</title>
    <url>http://images.slashdot.o rg/topics/topicslashdot.gif</url>
    <link>http://sl ashdot.org/</link>
    </image>

    <item>
    <title>ZOT OB Not Quite as Bad as Expected?</title>
    <link>http://it.slashdot.org/ar ticle.pl?sid=05/08/18/146220&amp;from=rss</link>
    </item>

    <item>
    <title>RSS Version 3 Specs Up for Review</title>
    <link>http://slashdot.org/article. pl?sid=05/08/18/1353238&amp;from=rss</link>
    </ite m>
    ...
    </channel>
    </rdf:RDF>

    or...

    Title: Slashdot
    Link: http://slashdot.org/
    Description: News for nerds, stuff that matters

    Title: ZOTOB Not Quite as Bad as Expected?
    Link: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/18/146 220&from=rss

    Title: RSS Version 3 Specs Up For Review
    Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/18/135323 8&from=rss
    ...

    Fuck XML's bloatedness. Simple data structures deserve simple file formats. And fuck the supposed "interoperability" and "standards-compliance" of XML, because this RSS 3 format can be parsed with one line of Python using only standard functions.

    In fact, fuck XML altogether. The Internet got along just fine using custom text/binary based formats for three decades. Then some fucktards came along and said, "Hey, maybe if we take a markup language intended for specifying attributes of text, and we add some more syntactical rules, all of our problems will be solved!" And then thousands of other clueless W3C-worshippers believed it.

    And now we have Tubgirl-esque protocols such as XML-RPC and XMPP (Jabber) which people somehow actually take seriously. What's wrong with people? I know we have huge hard drives and a lot of bandwidth these days, but that doesn't mean we should be going out of our way to waste it!

    (I mean no disrespect to the web/Internet standards process as a whole, or the organisations involved. I just think XML is hideously overused. It does have its place, like XHTML -- the DOM does make it possible to do interesting things with DHTML and JavaScript. But the tag-based syntax is optimised for specifying a tree-structured document and the attributes of text it contains. It sickens me that people don't realise this. A data model like RSS is in no place to be specified with XML.)

    --
    Signature.
  6. Re:durnit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Although I don't find the grandparent funny I guess the irony is that supposed web "standards" are moving so fast that "standards compliance" really means approximately nothing if you're a developer atm.

  7. Re:rss3? by Bogtha · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In fact, fuck XML altogether. The Internet got along just fine using custom text/binary based formats for three decades.

    Er, you do realise that XML is merely a simplified subset of SGML, on which HTML is based? Hard to agree that the Internet "got along just fine", when its killer app is based on something that is very similar to XML, only far more complicated

    But the tag-based syntax is optimised for specifying a tree-structured document and the attributes of text it contains.

    Sounds like RSS to me.

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  8. Re:While we're on the subject... by ubernostrum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    plans are afoot for Microsoft to co-opt RSS and rename it "web feeds"[from El Reg, so take it with a pinch of snuff]

    It is a better name, but Microsoft sure didn't come up with it; people in usability have been recommending the "feed" name for quite some time now in order to make feeds more accessible to the general public. The reasoning, of course, is the same as in calling your browser a "web browser" and not an "HTML/XHTML viewer".